Unknown SQL Exception 297 occurred

While monitoring the ULS logs on a SharePoint 2010 server I could see the following message being logged every few minutes for each and every database:

Unknown SQL Exception 297 occurred. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below. The user does not have permission to perform this action.

I scrolled up and down in the ULS log viewer but couldn’t see any useful information, such as the username or the action being performed.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to get to the bottom of this.  Pretty much everything seemed to be working fine.

For anybody else looking to fix this I’ll save you the details.  I ran the following query on the SQL server for the account used by the SharePoint Timer Service and the errors stopped:

GRANT VIEW SERVER STATE TO “domain\user”

More information on this command can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186717.aspx