‘AD Application monitoring’ > web synthetics, artificial users > android what image comes to mind? Is it a person, or a thing from a Sci-Fi movie? Perhaps Bishop from Aliens, Data from Star Trek. What does ‘AD Application monitoring’ consist of? Currently that means a CRL validity check, and ADFS web synthetic (proving that ADFS is responding). My thanks to Jason Windisch CSA, for the supplied PowerShell!
Quick Download https://github.com/theKevinJustin/ADApplications/
Tailoring the pack to your environment
The purpose of the pack is to add scheduled workflow that acts like the user, identifies if the CRL’s are about to expire. Most times, monitoring stops at ICMP ping. Most times, there’s still an outage, as the network, and servers are responding. The next layer is IIS, Apache, etc. Sometimes the network team gets involved, checking a base IIS URL is configured. Most outages aren’t network, nor IIS wasn’t running. This is why we focus on the web application responding. Does the multi-prong tactical attack make sense?
This pack delivers on-demand tasks, daily reports, and rules/monitors to reflect health. Customize the watcher node, some URL’s, save, and import into SCOM! The purpose
Assign watcher node(s)
Assign a watcher node by creating a registry key.
What does that mean? Watcher nodes are needed to provide user perspective.
Multiple site example
Issue: Users from sites 1,2,3 are having problems accessing web pages. To understand a user in site 2, leverage a server in site 2 to initiate the web request (invoke-webRequest in PowerShell).
Why: Differentiate user experience (per site). Answer the ‘did you know’ – is the application responding from this site/perspective.
Unfortunately, the watcher node concept eludes most administrators. Mastering ‘user perspective’ makes for an invaluable aid moving from reactive ‘fire fighting’ to proactively being told before users. Hopefully this explains the power where monitoring imitates user interactions for key web applications.
How: Create registry key on whatever servers you want to initiate web monitor
From PowerShell (as Admin), or Command Prompt (as admin)
reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\ADApplications\WatcherNode”
Example of XML snippet from AD Applications management pack
Set up CRL Validity check and ADFS synthetic
Next, configure the URL’s for the customer environment for the ‘AD Application monitoring’ management pack.
Update AD Applications module types for monitor/rules for CRL and ADFS synthetics
Configure the CRL validity check array
From your favorite XML editor (notepad++ pictured)
Find/Replace ##FQDN##, ##CRLstring##, numbers to customer environment
Configure the ADFS synthetic request(s)
From your favorite XML editor (notepad++ pictured)
Find/Replace $server, ##FederationFQDN##, if necessary, update ADFS URL string if different (the /adfs/ls/idpiniatedsignon.aspx portion) to customer environment
Save pack
Import and enjoy!
Documentation
URLGenie for advanced website monitoring
PowerShell invoke-webRequest
Addendum logic blog