Updated - System Center Monitoring Pack for Active Directory (AD)

  • Article

Overview

The Monitoring Pack for Active Directory (AD) provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of your Active Directory deployment. It monitors events that various Active Directory components and subsystems place in the Application, System, and Service event logs. It also monitors the overall health of the Active Directory system and provides alerts for critical performance issues.

The monitoring that this monitoring pack provides includes monitoring of domain controllers and monitoring of health from the perspective of clients that use Active Directory resources. To monitor domain controllers, ADMP 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 domain controllers.

Because client computers in your Active Directory environment can experience connectivity and service issues even when domain controllers appear to be operating correctly, ADMP includes the Active Directory Client Management Pack, which can help you identify such issues. The Active Directory Client Management Pack monitors the services that domain controllers provide. It provides information—in addition to the information that is collected directly on the domain controllers—about whether domain controllers are available by running transactions, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) binds and pings, against the directory service.

The September 2011 revision of the Monitoring Pack for Active Directory includes the following additions:

  • Fixes to problems reported by customers
  • Fixes to architectural issues to facilitate future SCOM releases.

Feature Summary

  • Replication
  • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
  • Domain Controller Locator (DCLocator)
  • Trusts
  • Net Logon service
  • File Replication Service (FRS)
  • Intersite Messaging service
  • Windows Time service
  • Key Distribution Center (KDC)
  • Service availability monitoring
  • Key performance data collection
  • Comprehensive reports, including reports about service availability and service health, plus reports that you can use for capacity planning

Known Issues for Localized Releases

  • For DEU language pack, data does not show in the following reports: "AD Domain Controllers", "AD Replication Site Links", and "AD Role Holders."
  • For FRA, RUS, DEU, ESN, and PTB language packs, some parameters for discoveries may not be displayed in override properties.

Release History

  • 3/23/2007 - Initial Release, version 6.0.5000.0
  • 1/15/2008 - Updated Guide - same version
  • 03/17/2008 - QFE, version 6.0.6278.3
  • 03/26/2008 - QFE, version 6.0.6278.10
  • 11/7/2008 - Initial release for 2000/2003/2008, version 6.0.6452.0
  • 11/3/2009 - Updated release, version 6.0.7065.0, with added Windows Server 2008 R2 support
  • 10/6/2011 - Updated release, version 6.0.7065.1, with fixes to bugs reported by customers and architectural issues to facilitate future Operations Manager's releases