Domain Controllers Health Checker

• Nirmal@DynamicPacks.net
• May 12, 2024
• No Comments

SmartProfiler Version 6.4 comes with Domain Controllers Health Checker – a tool designed to check health of all domain controllers in an Active Directory Forest. To open the DC Health Checker, click on “DC Health Checker” button under Active Directory Security pane.

The DC Health Checker checks all active directory health components for each domain controller such as DNS, NetLogon, Sysvol, DCdiag and other checks.

Domain Controllers Health Checker: Executing DC Health Checker

To refresh DC Health check for all domain controllers, click on “Execute Refresh” button. The process will check all domain controllers and execute a series of tests and then display the health information for each domain controller in the grid. The information displayed in the domain controllers grid shows the status of components such as Netlogon, DNS, Sysvol, DCDiag and so on:

As you can see in the screenshot above, it shows that there are two Domain Controllers with failures and one domain controller has passed all checks. The DC Health Checker performs following checks:

• DC Name: This is the domain controller name and to ensure it’s A Host record is registered in the DNS Server.
• DCSiteName: This is the Active Directory site to which the domain controller belong to.
• DCFSMOCheck: Displays the list of FSMO Roles hosted by the domain controller.
• Operating System: Operating System of the domain controller.
• Up Time: Domain Controller up time.
• Free Memory: Free memory available on the domain controller.
• Free Memory in Percentage: Free memory available in percentage on the domain controller.
• Ping: Checks to see if domain controller is pingable.
• Netlogon: Netlogon Service status on domain controller.
• NTDS: NTDS Service status on domain controller.
• DNS: DNS Server service status on domain controller.
• Then there are a series of tests performed using the DCDiag tool for Netlogons, FSMO Check, Advertising status, etc.

Scheduling DC Health Check

SmartProfiler for Active Directory also provides the ability to schedule the DC Health Check based on the custom schedule defined by you. To open the schedule settings, click on “Schedule Settings” button found on the action bar.

DC Health Scheduler settings can be modified as below:

• Run Every: Run every includes EveryDay, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
• Hour: In hour field, you can specify the hour.
• Condition: Thereare following conditions available with scheduler:
  • If any DC Health Failure: Notify only if any DC health failure is noticed.
  • On Successful Execution: Notify once DC Health check refresh is completed by Scheduler.
• Email Template: Select the Email Template that you would like to use.
• Action: Notify Via Email or Do Not Notify
• Excluded Domain Controllers: In the excluded domain controllers’ field, you can specify the list of domain controllers to be excluded by a comma.

Once the schedule settings are defined click on “Save Settings” button to save the schedule settings. Note that the DC Health Scheduler is executed by the SmartProfiler AD Agent which must be running on the computer where SmartProfiler is installed.

DC Health Checker component of SmartProfiler for Active Directory uses DCdiag tool which is also available for use from Microsoft site here.