Microsoft System Center Management Pack for ADDS

The Management Pack for Windows Server Active Directory Domain Services. Monitors Windows Server 2012, 2012R2, and 2016 Domain Controllers and domain health.

• 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.

• System Requirements

  Supported Operating System

  Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016

  • This Management Pack requires System Center 2012 R2 or newer.

• Install Instructions

  • See the Management Pack Guide for detailed instructions.

What are some of the things inside the Management Pack Guide. Make sure that you read the management pack prior to deploying in your environment(s)

Changes in Version 10.0.0.0

Version 10.0.0.0 of the Management Pack for ADDS is an initial release of a new Management Pack for Active Directory® (AD). It is based on the Active Directory Management Pack (AD MP) and includes many changes from the AD MP.

· Removed Event Alert rules, all Error and Warning events from AD related event logs are now only collected in the Events collections. 

· Informational events can be collected as well by turning on the Information Events rules.

· Replication Monitoring replaced with the following monitors:

o AD Replication Queue Monitor

o AD Show Replication Check

o Replication Partner Count Monitor

o Replication Consistency Monitor

· Removed Reliance on OOMADS.dll for Domain Controller monitoring removed oomads dependency from all MPs.

· Removed dependency on down-level DC discovery MPs

· Created well defined aggregate roll-ups for health monitors

· New server health monitors

o Strict replication

o DNS service

o Group Policy

o Network adapters

o Strict replication

· New domain member monitors

o Reliable time server

o Secure channel

o DC health

o Group policy

· Removed deprecated rules, alerts, and tools

· Added additional information to alerts and monitors and updated knowledge base information

· Added performance collection rules for DNS perf counters

Supported Configurations

This Management Pack requires System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 or later. A dedicated Operations Manager management group is not required. The configurations in the following table are supported:

Migration from the Active Directory® Management Pack (AD MP) to Active Directory, Domain Services (ADDS) Management Pack is not supported, but a side-by-side installation of these two products is supported.

All support is subject to the Microsoft overall Help and Support life cycle (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?Linkid=26134) and the System Center Operations Manager 2012 (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh205990.aspx) TechNet article.

The step-by-step procedures in this guide are based on the System Center Operations Manager 2012 user interface. The actual steps may vary if you are using a newer version.

Management Pack Scope

The AD DS Management Pack runs on Domain Controllers in your domain as well as Domain Members. It monitors the health of Domain Controllers as well as the health of the domain.

Prerequisites

The following requirements must be met to run this Management Pack:

· The AD DS Remote Server Administrations Tools must be installed on your Domain Controllers (DC). They are installed by default when a DC is promoted.

· System Center Operations Manager 2012 or newer

· Domain Controllers running Windows Server 2012 or newer

Mandatory Configuration

The following configurations are recommended on first installation of the ADDS Management Pack.

· Best Practice: Create a Management Pack for Customizations

· Enable the Agent Proxy setting on all domain controllers.

· Configure the domain member(s) to use for Domain Member Monitoring.

See Configuration tasks section for help with the above configurations

Management Pack Purpose

The Active Directory® Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of your Active Directory deployment. It also 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)

· Inter-site 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

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.