All, I've been asked recently to come up with monitoring requirements for an upcoming AD deployment to roughly 120 offices, all of which will be individual sites. I don't have experience (yet) with AD this size. Vendor whitepapers are little more than thinly disguised salespitches. Those companies that offer monitoring products for AD state that it's essential and, oh, by the way, we happen to have just the product for you. I'm not really able to get a clear picture of how critical it is to actively monitor AD and how granular you need to be.
One company I spoke with said that it's sufficient to monitor DNS and DHCP and they will tell you if anything's up. I don't buy that, other than I believe that availability of DNS and verifying that dynamic update is working and that the DC's are registering, etc. Another company states that you need very granular monitoring complete with custom scripts, automated tasks, and alerts. Microsoft says that all we need is MOM. Well, MOM's out as our mandate is to have a monitoring product that is cross platform (we also have various flavors of UNIX and some big iron). Our current product is from the first company I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I believe the truth is somewhere between the two companies. I'm looking for suggestions based on practical experience though. Anyone want to share? Thanks, MIke ******************* PLEASE NOTE ******************* This E-Mail/telefax message and any documents accompanying this transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended solely for the addressee(s) named above. If you are not the intended addressee/recipient, you are hereby notified that any use of, disclosure, copying, distribution, or reliance on the contents of this E-Mail/telefax information is strictly prohibited and may result in legal action against you. Please reply to the sender advising of the error in transmission and immediately delete/destroy the message and any accompanying documents. Thank you. List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
