Free Tools for Active Directory Monitoring and Management [Sponsored]

by Petri IT Knowledgebase Team - October 30, 2012

Sponsored IT content provided by SolarWinds 

Managing Active Directory is cumbersome. Managing user and computer accounts is one of the most challenging tasks for an IT Administrator. Manual configuration of user properties can be extremely time consuming, tiring and could also be error prone. Researching file and folder permissions when employees can’t access a file requires sifting through extensive sets of user and group permissions. And then you need to keep an eye on Active Directory performance, because nearly every application in your organization relies on this critical resource.

This article will show you how to solve the following problems with Active Directory:

• Inactive User Account Removal - Scan Active Directory and optionally remove users who have not logged in for a certain amount of time.
• Inactive Computer Account Removal - Scan Active Directory and optionally remove computers that are over a certain number of days old.
• User Import - Create users in bulk, using a CSV file and specify the attributes.
• Research file/folder permissions - See a complete hierarchical view of the effective permissions & access rights for a specific user, file folder (NTFS) or share drive.
• Active Directory Performance Issues – Proactively alert on key Active Directory performance metrics before end users are impacted.

How to Remove Inactive User Accounts

Scan and Remove users from AD in simple steps

Step 1: Launch the Inactive User Accounts Removal Tool and Enter the Credentials Information and Test those Credentials

Credentials entering screen

Step 2: Next, List the Accounts. To select a different date, just select the drop down and select a different date. You can also filter, Select All or de-Select All Accounts.

Listing the Inactive user accounts in the domain

Listing the Inactive user accounts date wise

Note: You can Export the List to have a record

Step 3: Select Remove to Remove the Accounts from the Domain

Exporting the Inactive user account List

Removing the selected Inactive users accounts

How to Remove Inactive Computer Accounts

Removing Inactive Computer Accounts will be a cake walk when you follow these steps. Launch the Inactive Computer Accounts Removal Tool and Follow the Step 1, Step 2 & Step 3 of the previous section on Removing Inactive User Accounts. See how easy it is to keep your Inactive Accounts from cluttering your directory?

How to Import New Users in Bulk

You will find that using the instructions below will be a lot easier than using custom scripts or some other back end method to create users in bulk.

Note:

• It is essential to have the actual file that needs to be imported
• While selecting a file, you can either select a CSV or Excel
• The User Import Tool can automatically create an exchange mailbox too

Step 1: Enter the Credentials and Click Next

Credentials entering screen

Step 2: Map the Custom Fields in the Export file with what is available in the Active Directory. You can update as few or as many properties as you want. For example, if the import file has a Phone Number, but that does not appear, you can easily search the Active Directory for the property and add it to the list to be mapped.

Step 3: Clicking Next would show an example of all the accounts that you are importing and the corresponding values

Mapping the fields

Step 4: Finally Click Create and the Accounts are created on your domain

You can make any last minute changes on this page or deselect one of the values that don’t require importing.

Creating the Accounts in the domain

Analyze file permissions for Active Directory

Here is how you can quickly research who has access to what files/folders. First, launch the Permissions Analyzer for Active Directory Tool, type the User Name or Account Name of the group or user you to view in the Group or User field and search. This allows you to verify the account exists before performing the analysis. Click Browse, and then navigate to the file or folder you want to view permissions for, and then click OK and Analyze.

Dashboard displays various user permissions as well as Users NTFS and Share level permissions.

Here you can see a complete hierarchical view of the effective permissions & access rights for a specific user, file folder (NTFS) or share drive. This dashboard also allows you to browse permissions by group or individual user or analyze user permissions based on group membership.

Proactively Monitor Active Directory Performance

Download a free 30-day trial of Server & Application Monitor, and instantly start monitoring key performance metrics for Active Directory like DNS problems, replication queues, and so on. With this tool, you can also monitor server performance including hardware health and operating system metrics, as well as 100s of other applications.