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Performance Metrics for Active Directory

Monitoring Active Directory (AD) helps in maintaining consistent directory data and also monitor critical parameters to stay ahead of potential bottlenecks through instant alerts. The Active Directory monitor uses the Site24x7 Windows agent for monitoring. Install the Windows agent and get your AD servers auto-discovered.

Once the AD server monitor is successfully added to your Site24x7 account,

  • View performance metrics for AD monitors. Log in to Site24x7 and go to Server > Microsoft Active Directory.
  • Add a Threshold and Availability profile to declare a specific resource as critical or down. Go to Admin > Configuration Profiles > Threshold and Availability (+).
  • Analyze trends and identify performance issues with exclusive performance reports.
  • View key metrics in a single glance with the server inventory and health dashboards, or create your own.

Interpret Active Directory Performance Metrics

  • Overview: Get the AD server details, LDAP, replication, address book browses, and client sessions. 
  • Replication: Alleviate replication issues by gaining information on Directory and Resource Administration (DRA) services.
  • Domain Services: Shows performance usages of read, write, and search operations (LDAP, SAM, DRA) to databases.
  • LDAP: Prevent server overload by knowing the number of clients connected to a specific Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) session.
  • Security Account Manager (SAM): Intimates other services that their subsystem is ready to accept requests.
  • Databases (DB): Ensure consistent functioning of directory files and if there is enough room for the files to grow.

Overview

Parameters Description
Microsoft Active Directory Details Gives the domain name and the forest name
Service Status Status of all the AD related Windows services
Kerberos & NTLM Authentication Shows the number of NTLM and Kerberos authentications per second serviced by this domain controller 
LDAP Active Threads The current number of threads used by the LDAP subsystem of the local directory service
LDAP Active Client Sessions The number of active (currently connected) LDAP client sessions
DRA Inbound Synchronization Objects Remaining The number of objects remaining until the full synchronization is completed
DRA Pending Replication Synchronization The number of directory synchronizations that are queued for this server but not yet processed
Address Book Browses Shows the rate at which Address Book clients perform browse operations 
Address Book Client Sessions Shows the number of connected Address Book client sessions 

Replication

Parameters Description
Replicated Inbound (bytes) Shows the total number of bytes replicated in. This counter is the sum of the number of uncompressed bytes (never compressed) and the number of compressed bytes (after compression) 
Replicated Outbound (bytes) Shows the total number of bytes replicated out. It is the sum of the number of uncompressed bytes (never compressed) and the number of compressed bytes (after compression) 
DRA Replication Objects Shows the number of inbound and outbound objects received from and sent to neighbors through inbound and outbound replication respectively.

Domain Services (DS)

Parameters Description
Read Operations:
Read (%) from DRA Shows the percentage of directory reads coming from DRA 
Read (%) from KCC Shows the percentage of directory reads coming from KCC 
Read (%) from LSA Shows the percentage of directory reads coming from LSA 
Read (%) from NSPI Shows the percentage of directory reads coming from NSPI 
Read (%) from NTDSAPI Shows the percentage of directory reads coming from NTDSAPI 
Read (%) from SAM Shows the percentage of directory reads coming from SAM 
Read (%) from OTHERS Shows the percentage of directory reads that do not come from SAM, DRA, LDAP, LSA, XDS, KCC, or NSPI 
Write Operations:
Write (%) from DRA Shows the percentage of directory writes coming from DRA 
Write (%) from LDAP  Shows the percentage of directory writes coming from LDAP 
Write (%) from LSA  Shows the percentage of directory writes coming from LSA 
Write (%) from NSPI  Shows the percentage of directory writes coming from NSPI 
Write (%) from NTDSAPI  Shows the percentage of directory writes coming from NTDSAPI 
Write (%) from SAM  Shows the percentage of directory writes coming from SAM 
Write (%) from OTHERS  Shows the percentage of directory writes that do not come from SAM, DRA, LDAP, LSA, XDS, KCC, or NSPI 
Search Operations:
Search (%) from DRA   Shows the percentage of directory searches coming from DRA 
Search (%) from LDAP  Shows the percentage of directory searches coming from LDAP 
Search (%) from LSA  Shows the percentage of directory searches coming from LSA 
Search (%) from NSPI  Shows the percentage of directory searches coming from NSPI 
Search (%) from NTDSAPI  Shows the percentage of directory searches coming from NTDSAPI 
Search (%) from SAM  Shows the percentage of directory searches coming from SAM 
Search (%) from OTHERS  Shows the percentage of directory searches that do not come from SAM, DRA, LDAP, LSA, XDS, KCC, or NSPI 

LDAP

Parameters Description
LDAP Active Client Sessions Shows the number of currently connected LDAP client sessions
LDAP Active Threads The current number of threads in use by the LDAP subsystem of the local directory service
LDAP Operations The number of writes and search operations per second performed by LDAP clients
Successful Binds The number of LDAP bindings (per second) that occurred successfully

Security Account Manager (SAM)

Parameters Description
Machine Creations Shows the number of SAM created machine attempts per second 
User Creations Shows the number of SAM create-user attempts per second 

Databases (DB)

Parameters Description
Reads and Writes The rate of database read and write operations completed 
Cache Size The amount of system memory used by the database cache manager to hold commonly used information from the database file(s) to prevent file operations
Waiting Records and Threads Shows the number of records and threads waiting for their data to be written to the log during a database update 
I/O Log Writes Shows the number of times that the contents of the log buffers are written to the log 
Average I/O Log Writes  It is the average length of time, in milliseconds, per log file write operation
Average I/O Database Reads  It is the average length of time, in milliseconds, per database read operation

Performance Reports for AD

Log in to Site24x7 and go to Reports > Microsoft Active Directory. The following reports are available for AD monitoring:

  • Availability Summary Report
  • Busy Hours Report
  • Health Trend Report
  • Performance Report

Learn more.

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