Checking the pulse of Active Directory

I recently became responsible for a midsize Windows-based Active Directory network. To keep things running smoothly, I’ve been trying to keep changes made to a minimum and record what I’ve been doing. I haven’t found any good ways of tracking the health of Active Directory. Do you have any suggestions? – Via the Internet

I recently became responsible for a midsize Windows-based Active Directory network. To keep things running smoothly, I’ve been trying to keep changes made to a minimum and record what I’ve been doing. I haven’t found any good ways of tracking the health of Active Directory. Do you have any suggestions?

– Via the Internet

There are two things I can suggest that should help minimize some of the more common Active Directory problems I have seen. The first is to make sure all your servers, especially the domain controllers, have the same time.  While Active Directory should handle this, I have seen cases where it won’t. To solve this, I picked a primary server and used the net time command to point to an external NTP server. I then used the same command on the other domain controllers to point them toward the server looking at the external NTP server to get them to share the same time.

The other task involves the installation of the Windows 2000 Server Resource kit on at least the domain controllers, if not all the servers on your network. One of the tools you will find is the Active Directory Replication Monitor. This will let you watch the Active Directory replication process between servers. As long as you see a successful sync message between servers, you should be in pretty good shape from an Active Directory standpoint.

There are other tools you can look at that go into more detail. Quest Software has an Active Directory monitoring tool that can give you additional information on a more real-time basis.