Active Directory Server 2008 and above (Monitoring)

Summary

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and above AD Monitoring Management Pack

Purpose

The Microsoft® Windows® Active Directory Management Pack provides forest-wide monitoring of the Active Directory® directory service and its required subsystems. In addition to real-time performance and event monitoring, this Management Pack provides automated and customizable response capabilities, which you can use to respond immediately to critical performance, health, or capacity issues.

Featuring extensive Active Directory knowledge and links to the most up-to-date information sources, the intent of this Management Pack is to provide value, and reduce the cost, effort, and skills required to manage Active Directory.

You can use the information in this Management Pack, to manage Active Directory, including end-to-end replication, and identify potential issues before they become critical.

Features

The Active Directory Management Pack provides the features you need to manage your Active Directory environment, including automated discovery, health monitoring and recovery, and replication monitoring. The extensive embedded knowledge in this Management Pack enables you to manage your Active Directory environment, increasing availability, security, and performance. For example, this Management Pack alerts you to the following critical conditions:

• Active Directory replication fails.

• The global catalog is not available.

• Active Directory is not responding.

• Domain Name System (DNS) is not available.

This Management Pack includes views that you can use to centrally monitor the health, performance, and availability of your Active Directory environment. You can use views such as the following to instantly begin managing your Active Directory environment to provide an immediate return on your investment:

• Available Disk Space on Windows Domain Controllers

• Active Directory Database

• Replication Traffic — Objects per Second

This Management Pack also provides automated rules to monitor the performance and health of essential Active Directory functions, including the following:

• Primary domain controller (PDC) emulator master availability

• Replication latency

• Available disk space for drive hosting the Active Directory database

These rules gather data on speed, capacity, and availability. You can easily analyze this performance information by using the Active Directory–specific reports that are included in this Management Pack. You can use these reports to perform accurate load balancing and capacity planning and to alert you to possible future problems. In addition, there are reports, diagram views, and tasks that:

• Track availability of domain controllers and key Active Directory services.

• Provide details about domain topology and information about trusts, replication topology, and location of operation masters.

• Provide information about possible replication problems.

Configuration

Because DNS is such a vital component of Active Directory, it is recommended that you also install the Microsoft Domain Name Service Management Pack.

It is also recommended that you install the Windows Operating Systems Management Pack.

After initial installation of the Active Directory Management Pack, you will need to configure the following items:

Determine the maximum acceptable replication latency across your forest, that is, the maximum amount of time that you are willing to wait for changes to arrive at any given domain controller.

Override the rules to enabled collection:

• AD Replication Monitoring Performance Collection (Sources)

• AD Replication Monitoring Performance Collection (Targets)

Determine which naming contexts you want to monitor replication latency for. By default, all Application Partitions and each Domain Partition are monitored. If you want to remove either of these or add the Configuration Partition, modify the overrides for the monitor AD Replication Monitoring.

Decide which domain controllers you want to collect inbound or outbound replication latency performance data for. Review the knowledge base information in the Active AD Replication Monitoring Performance Collection (Sources) and AD Replication Monitoring Performance Collection (Targets) and then configure data collection for these domain controllers.

Note

For detailed information about each of these steps and for operations best practices, see the Active Directory Management Pack Guide.