Active Directory Monitoring

Active Directory Monitoring in a large organization can be an overwhelming task. There are many services, events, folders and policies that must be monitored in Active Directory to insure a healthy environment. There are many individual Active Directory tools and software packages that provide a centralized view of Active Directory across the entire forest. Active Directory Monitoring helps resolve issues in a timely manner and finding potential issues that could lead into larger issues.

Benefits to administrators:
1. Increased uptime of Active Directory Servers, due to improved reliability and system understanding.
2. Ensure that all services on each Domain Controller are in a healthy state.
3. Data across all domain controllers are in a consistent state and domain replication is occurring with no errors.
4. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is working correctly and is responding quickly.
5. Domain Controller resources are stable and not saturated.

If you have a small organization than active directory monitoring may not be necessary. For large organizations or if you need to maintain a high level of service then active directory monitoring is a must. By not monitoring active directory you run several risks. Some risks include: account logon failure, account lockout, domain controller failure, security policy failure, application failure.

There are many different software applications for active directory monitoring. Some applications require an agent to be installed, there is agentless and snmp monitoring tools. For a list of active directory monitoring tools check out my Active Directory software list.