Advantages of Active Directory monitoring - By: Andrew Clarke

It has been considerably observed that in order to smoothly run all the administrative tasks, there is a great need of Active Directory. To drive all administrative tasks efficiently and to execute the organization’s behavioral as well as operational activities, Active Directory plays a vital role. Active Directory is the directory service included with Windows servers and provides the methodology to manage the identities and relationships that make up the network environment. As the Active Directory affects the whole network and draws impact on the productivity of an organization, it is mandatory to regularly monitor the Active Directory. The monitoring process also helps in detecting and resolving any kind of potential network problem before they arise, so that users can have fluent access to their critical services.

Features

Active Directory Monitoring - Monitor Active Directory System Performance

Active Directory helps in monitoring the performance of CPU and other computer peripherals; it also ensures the utilization of computer resources like memory and disk space. Operators can achieve both real time and historical statistics for CPU, memory and disk space utilization. Using customizable thresholds, operators can be notified well in advance and thereby proactively prevent outages before they occur. User can also view the number of processes that are currently active on the system.

Active Directory Monitoring - Monitor Critical Processes & Counters

Active Directory monitors the usage of critical LSASS & NTFRS processes. The parameters which are monitored include CPU usage, physical RAM, file reads, file writes, cache hits, etc. You can also monitor critical network counters like Connected Users, LDAP Client Sessions, & LDAP Bind Time as well as performance counters like NTLM Authentication, Kerberos Authentication & LDAP Searches.

Benefits

There are several benefits of Active Directory monitoring which primarily include the following:

Ensures agent less monitoring

Capable of detecting Active Directory problems quickly

Locates the exact failure

Real time alerting - proactive response for problems impacting Active Directory service

Minimize Active Directory downtime

Provides you information about the health of your Active Directory Server

The Active Directory monitoring helps in controlling the performance and availability of the server around the network. Active Directory depends on certain critical services for proper operation. The first step in ensuring Active Directory availability is to monitor these critical services.

Active Directory Monitor monitors the following critical services

Server Service that enables the computer to connect to other computers on the network based on the SMB protocol.
File Replication Service that maintains file synchronization of file directory contents among multiple servers.

DNS Client service that resolves and caches DNS names.

Security Accounts Manager Service that signals other services that the Security Accounts Manager subsystem is ready to accept requests.

Intersite Messaging Service that is used for email-based replication between sites.
Net Logon Service that supports pass-through authentication of account logon events for computers in a domain.
There are various Active Directory utilities available among which Lepide Active Directory Management & Reporting is counted as the best. It is the perfect solution to the complex problems of built-in Windows administration tools. This tool provides a simple but efficient mechanism to manage all organizational units around the network.

About the Author

The author of this article is a renowned network administrator having hands-on experience in reviewing Active Directory utilities. The author has delivered various articles that help the users to easily understand the concept of Active Directory monitoring.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/Andrew-Clarke/210575

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