Windows Server Active Directory (AD)

The Active Directory Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of your Active Directory deployment. It monitors the overall health of the Active Directory system and alerts you to critical performance issues.

The monitoring provided by this management pack includes monitoring of the domain controllers and monitoring of health from the perspective of clients utilizing Active Directory resources. To monitor the domain controllers, the Active Directory Management Pack provides a predefined, ready-to-run set of processing rules, monitoring scripts, and reports that are designed specifically to monitor the performance and availability of the Active Directory domain controllers.

The client in your environment might experience connectivity and service issues even though the domain controller appears to be operating correctly. The Active Directory Domain Member Management Pack, included in the Active Directory Management Pack, helps to identify these issues. This management pack monitors the services provided by the domain controller. It provides information in addition to that collected directly on the domain controller about whether they are available by running synthetic transactions against the directory service, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) binds and LDAP pings.

In addition to health monitoring capabilities, this management pack provides a complete Active Directory monitoring solution by monitoring the health of vital processes that your Active Directory deployment depends upon, including the following:

• Replication
• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
• Domain Controller Locator
• Trusts
• Net Logon service
• File Replication Service (FRS)
• Intersite Messaging service
• Windows Time service
• Active Directory Web Services (ADWS)
• Active Directory Management Gateway Service
• Key Distribution Center (KDC)
• Monitoring service availability
• Collecting key performance data
• Providing comprehensive reports, including reports about service availability and service health and reports that can be used for capacity planning

With this management pack, information technology (IT) administrators can automate one-to-many management of users and computers, simplifying administrative tasks and reduce IT costs. Administrators can efficiently implement security settings, enforce IT policies, and minimize service outages.