Active Directory is Microsoft's implementation of Internet standard directory along with protocol names. Almost every company that has Windows infrastructure is likely to be using AD to manage user accounts and access rights within domains. Inspite of its top-notch capabilities, maintaining Active Directory domains is challenging and time consuming as it is still prone to performance issues such as slow logons, accounts locked out, resource access response times, etc. Hence, IT Operations teams need an active directory performance monitoring tool to maintain optimal health of active directory. Also, monitoring Active Directory health goes a long way in ensuring continuity of your enterprise network.
Applications Manager provides active directory performance monitoring by tracking crucial performance metrics and performing important diagnostic tests. It can also act as an extensive AD monitor that identifies performance bottlenecks and employs corrective actions to resolve them ensuring smooth operation of active directory services.
Keep track of domain controller performance, authentication and service directories (NTDS files). Ensure the NTDS files do not run out of disk space resulting in user authentication and access failure.
Applications Manager provides insights about various categories of active directory services such as domain services, certificate services, directory federation services, and rights management. These services have several important functionalities varying from data storage to rights management.
With Applications Manager's AD Monitoring tool, you can get an overview of the state of all your active directory services at a glance. You can keep an eye on the services' health, availability, and start modes by configuring alarms and receiving notifications when the thresholds are violated. Monitor directory services to ensure addresses, email, and phone contacts are always in sync.
You can also gain insights into performance counters like number of Kerberos Authentications, NLTM Authentications that can be used to track all authentications serviced by the domain controller.
Active directories operate by replicating various partitions such as schema, configuration, domain, etc. to ensure that the data between domain controllers remain consistent.
With Applications Manager, you can track the replication partitions, understand the load generated by replication operations and measure the ability of the AD server to process this load. Find out if replication-related activities are contributing to processing delays. Quickly become aware of replication issues such as synchronization failures. Applications Manager also provides you details about the pending replications that could indicate processing bottlenecks.
Applications Manager's active directory monitoring tool provides information about ports - their connectivity status, response time and health. Monitoring port health helps keep tab of computer authentication that takes place through these ports thereby ensuring smooth user process.
Applications Manager's active directory monitoring software automatically performs certain diagnostic tests such as connectivity check, Knowledge consistency check, File Replication Check, Object Replication check, etc. These tests help you check the availability, responsiveness and overall health of the AD server.
Local System Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) process can sometimes use up enough resources to hang or crash a DC and cause client log-on delays. Understand what causes a heavier load on the LSASS process - it could be inefficient LDAP queries by a user, an application or even a Linux client Log-on.
Become aware of sudden surges in numbers of clients connected to an LDAP session.. This may indicate that either another domain controller has gone offline, or that a change in the Active Directory subnet definitions has defined this DC as "closest."
With Applications Manager's AD Monitoring software:
Understand the number of client applications that knows how to create an address book session to the global catalog using NSPI through.
If the number of jobs exceeds the upper threshold, the server may be overloaded, need a hardware upgrade, or needs further replication tuning to optimize performance.
If you are looking to monitor your Active Directory Service, just download a trial version of Applications Manager, set up the Active Directory monitor, and start tracking the performance now!
It allows us to track crucial metrics such as response times, resource utilization, error rates, and transaction performance. The real-time monitoring alerts promptly notify us of any issues or anomalies, enabling us to take immediate action.
Reviewer Role: Research and Development
Tech Support Manager, Lexmark