Slow on Retrieving data from 38GB SQL Table - sql-server

Question

I am looking for some advise. I have a SQL Server table called AuditLog and this table records any action/changes that happens to our DB from our web application.
I am trying to build some reports and anytime I try to pull data from this table it makes my query run from seconds to 10mins+. Just doing a
select * from dbo.auditlog
takes about 2hours+.
The table has 77 million rows and is growing. Anyhow, only thoughts at this moment is to do an index but that would slow down inserts. Not sure how much that would affect performance but have held back on it. Other thoughts were to partition the table or do an index view but we are running SQL Server 2014 Standard Edition and those options are not supported.
Here is the table create statement:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[AuditLog]
(
[AuditLogId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL,
[UserId] [uniqueidentifier] NULL,
[EventDateUtc] [datetime] NOT NULL,
[EventType] [char](1) NOT NULL,
[TableName] [nvarchar](100) NOT NULL,
[RecordId] [nvarchar](100) NOT NULL,
[ColumnName] [nvarchar](100) NOT NULL,
[OriginalValue] [nvarchar](max) NULL,
[NewValue] [nvarchar](max) NULL,
[Rams1RecordID] [uniqueidentifier] NULL,
[Rams1AuditHistoryID] [uniqueidentifier] NULL,
[Rams1UserID] [uniqueidentifier] NULL,
[CreatedBy] [uniqueidentifier] NULL,
[CreatedDate] [datetime] NULL DEFAULT (getdate()),
[OriginalValueNiceName] [nvarchar](100) NULL,
[NewValueNiceName] [nvarchar](100) NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_AuditLog]
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([TableName] ASC, [RecordId] ASC, [AuditLogId] ASC)
) ON [PRIMARY] TEXTIMAGE_ON [PRIMARY]
GO
SET ANSI_PADDING OFF
GO
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[AuditLog] WITH NOCHECK
ADD CONSTRAINT [FK_AuditLog_User]
FOREIGN KEY([UserId]) REFERENCES [dbo].[User] ([UserID])
GO
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[AuditLog] CHECK CONSTRAINT [FK_AuditLog_User]
GO
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[AuditLog] WITH NOCHECK
ADD CONSTRAINT [FK_AuditLog_UserCreatedBy]
FOREIGN KEY([CreatedBy]) REFERENCES [dbo].[User] ([UserID])
GO
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[AuditLog] CHECK CONSTRAINT [FK_AuditLog_UserCreatedBy]
GO

Answer 1

With something that big there are a couple of things you might try.
The first thing you need to do is define how you accessing the table MOST of the time and index accordingly.
I would hope you are not do a select * from AuditLog without any filtering for a reporting solution - it shouldn't even be an option.
Finally, instead of indexed views or partitioning, you might consider a partitioned view.
A partitioned view is basically breaking your table up, physically into smaller meaningful tables - based on date or type or object or however you are MOST often accessing it. Each table is then indexed separately giving you much better stats and if you in 2012 or higher you can take advantage of ColumnStore, assuming you use something like a DATE to group the data.
Create a view that spans all of the tables and then report based on the view. Since you already grouped your data by how you MOST often will access it, your filter will act similarly to partition exclusion and get you to your data faster.
Of course this will result in a little more maintenance and some code change, but be well worth the effort if you are storing that much data and more in a single table.