Active Directory Domain Services

Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) stores information about objects on the network so that administrators and users can easily access this information.

For more information about AD DS, see the Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) documentation.

Prerequisites

To collect AD DS telemetry, you must install the Ops Agent:

For metrics, install version 2.15.0 or higher.
For logs, install version 2.15.0 or higher.

This integration supports AD DS versions Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, and Windows Server 2019.

Configure your AD DS instance

By default, Active Directory Windows event logs and performance counters are enabled.

Configure the Ops Agent for AD DS

Following the guide to configure the Ops Agent, add the required elements to collect telemetry from AD DS instances, and restart the agent.

Example configuration

The following command creates the configuration to collect and ingest telemetry for AD DS and restarts the Ops Agent:

# Create a back up of the existing file so existing configurations are not lost.
Copy-Item -Path 'C:\Program Files\Google\Cloud Operations\Ops Agent\config\config.yaml' -Destination 'C:\Program Files\Google\Cloud Operations\Ops Agent\config\config.yaml.bak'

# Configure the Ops Agent.
Add-Content 'C:\Program Files\Google\Cloud Operations\Ops Agent\config\config.yaml' "
logging:
  receivers:
    active_directory_ds:
      type: active_directory_ds
  service:
    pipelines:
      active_directory_ds:
        receivers:
        - active_directory_ds

metrics:
  receivers:
    active_directory_ds:
      type: active_directory_ds
  service:
    pipelines:
      active_directory_ds:
        receivers:
        - active_directory_ds
"

Stop-Service google-cloud-ops-agent -Force
Start-Service google-cloud-ops-agent*

Configure logs collection

To ingest logs from AD DS, you must create receivers for the logs that AD DS produces and then create a pipeline for the new receivers.

To configure a receiver for your active_directory_ds logs, specify the following fields:

Field	Default	Description
`type`		The value must be `active_directory_ds`.

What is logged

The logName is derived from the receiver IDs specified in the configuration. Detailed fields inside the LogEntry are as follows.

active_directory_ds logs contain the following fields in the LogEntry:

Field	Type	Description
`jsonPayload.Channel`	string	The event log channel where the log was logged.
`jsonPayload.ComputerName`	string	The name of the computer from which this log originates.
`jsonPayload.Data`	string	Extra event-specific data included with the log.
`jsonPayload.EventCategory`	number	The category of the event.
`jsonPayload.EventID`	number	An ID identifying the type of the event.
`jsonPayload.EventType`	string	The type of event.
`jsonPayload.Message`	string	The log message.
`jsonPayload.Qualifiers`	number	A qualifier number that is used for event identification.
`jsonPayload.RecordNumber`	number	The sequence number of the event log.
`jsonPayload.Sid`	string	The security identifier identifying a security principal or security group of the process that logged this message.
`jsonPayload.SourceName`	string	The source component that logged this message.
`jsonPayload.StringInserts`	[]string	Dynamic string data that was used to construct the log message.
`jsonPayload.TimeGenerated`	string	A timestamp representing when the record was generated.
`jsonPayload.TimeWritten`	string	A timestamp representing when the record was written to the event log.

Configure metrics collection

To ingest metrics from AD DS, you must create receivers for the metrics that AD DS produces and then create a pipeline for the new receivers.

To configure a receiver for your active_directory_ds metrics, specify the following fields:

Field	Default	Description
`collection_interval`	`60s`	A `time.Duration` value, such as `30s` or `5m`.
`type`		The value must be `active_directory_ds`.

What is monitored

The following table provides the list of metrics that the Ops Agent collects from the AD DS instance.

Metric type
Kind, Type Monitored resources	Labels
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.bind.rate`
`GAUGE`, `DOUBLE` gce_instance	`type`
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.ldap.bind.last_successful.time`
`GAUGE`, `INT64` gce_instance
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.ldap.bind.rate`
`GAUGE`, `DOUBLE` gce_instance
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.ldap.client.session.count`
`GAUGE`, `INT64` gce_instance
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.ldap.search.rate`
`GAUGE`, `DOUBLE` gce_instance
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.name_cache.hit_rate`
`GAUGE`, `DOUBLE` gce_instance
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.notification.queued`
`GAUGE`, `INT64` gce_instance
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.operation.rate`
`GAUGE`, `DOUBLE` gce_instance	`type`
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.replication.network.io`
`CUMULATIVE`, `INT64` gce_instance	`direction` `type`
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.replication.object.rate`
`GAUGE`, `DOUBLE` gce_instance	`direction`
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.replication.operation.pending`
`GAUGE`, `INT64` gce_instance
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.replication.property.rate`
`GAUGE`, `DOUBLE` gce_instance	`direction`
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.replication.sync.object.pending`
`GAUGE`, `INT64` gce_instance
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.replication.sync.request.count`
`CUMULATIVE`, `INT64` gce_instance	`result`
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.replication.value.rate`
`GAUGE`, `DOUBLE` gce_instance	`direction` `type`
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.security_descriptor_propagations_event.queued`
`GAUGE`, `INT64` gce_instance
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.suboperation.rate`
`GAUGE`, `DOUBLE` gce_instance	`type`
`workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.thread.count`
`GAUGE`, `INT64` gce_instance

Sample dashboard

To view your AD DS metrics, you must have a chart or dashboard configured. Cloud Monitoring provides a library of sample dashboards for integrations, which contain preconfigured charts. For information about installing these dashboards, see Installing sample dashboards.

Verify the configuration

This section describes how to verify that you correctly configured the AD DS receiver. It might take one or two minutes for the Ops Agent to begin collecting telemetry.

To verify that the logs are ingested, go to the Logs Explorer and run the following query to view the AD DS logs:

resource.type="gce_instance"
logName=("projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/active_directory_ds")

To verify that the metrics are ingested, go to Metrics Explorer and run the following query in the MQL tab:

fetch gce_instance
| metric 'workload.googleapis.com/active_directory.ds.bind.rate'
| every 1m

What's next

For a walkthrough on how to use Ansible to install the Ops Agent, configure a third-party application, and install a sample dashboard, see the Install the Ops Agent to troubleshoot third-party applications video.