SQL Trace or DMV’s without sysadmin permissions

Sometimes a login has only a limited set of permissions, perhaps readonly credentials to a database or server. However, it might be necessary for this login to run traces and access server info from DMV’s.

• To run SQL Trace you need the ALTER TRACE permission.
• To access DMV’s you need the VIEW SERVER STATE permission.

The administrator can assign this through SSMS or as T-SQL. This is of course documented in BOL here.