Active Administrator 8.7 - User Guide

Active Directory Web Services service is not running

Alerts Appendix > Domain controller alerts > Active Directory Web Services service is not running

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Active Directory Web Services service is not running

Indicates Active Directory® Web Services service is currently not running on the domain controller.

Data collector

•	Category: Windows Services

•	Name: Active Directory Web Services

•	Supported on: Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2022

•	Required permissions: When monitored locally or remotely, domain administrator privilege is required.

Description

The Directory Analyzer agent periodically checks to ensure Active Directory Web Services is running.

Resolution

Use the Services MCC snap-in or another SCP application to restart Active Directory Web Services.

Consecutive replication failures

Description

The Directory Analyzer agent constantly monitors replication events on a server. When replication fails too many consecutive times, this alert is issued.

Resolution

DC cache hits

DC cache hits

Indicates the performance of the server may be degraded because of too few cache read hits.

Data collector

•	Category: Performance Counters

•	Name: Cache copy read hits

•	Supported on: Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2022

•	Required permissions: When monitored locally and remotely, only domain user privilege is required and the user must be a part of the Performance Logs User group.

Description

The Directory Analyzer agent monitors the cache copy read hits data collector on the domain controller. If the value of the data collector drops below the configured threshold for a period exceeding the configured duration, the agent sets this alert condition.

Resolution

•	Reduced cache hits are due to excessive disk I/O or insufficient memory, or both. When the cache hit percentage drops, the system spends more time waiting for disk accesses to complete, and overall system throughput suffers enormously.

•	If possible, try to reduce the number of applications running on the server that is generating disk I/O. If you are running several batch jobs on the server, running them one after the other, rather than all at the same time, may actually be faster.

•	You can also try to reduce the number of users accessing the server by moving heavily-used files to other, less-loaded servers.

DC DIT disk space

DC DIT disk space

Indicates that the amount of disk space available on the volume that Active Directory® uses for its database is less than or equal to the configured threshold.

Data collector

•	Category: General

•	Name: Active Directory database details

•	Supported on: Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2022

•	Required permissions: When monitored locally and remotely, only domain user privilege is required. When monitored remotely, the target server must have WMI remote access enabled and the user must be a member of the Distributed COM Users group.

Description

The Directory Analyzer agent monitors the disk space available on the volume containing the Active Directory database. If the amount of disk space available on this volume drops below the configured threshold for a period exceeding the configured duration, the agent sets this alert condition.

If Active Directory runs out of disk space during processing, it will eventually fail, and the server will shut down immediately.

A low disk space condition can be due to many different things, such as:

•	a user copying large amounts of data to the server for temporary storage

•	an excessively large print job in the print queue

•	an excessively large number of print jobs in the print queue

•	a widely distributed email with large attachments arriving on the server from outside

It is also possible that Active Directory may be using up more disk space than normal by importing a large number of objects into the directory through replication or by creating a large number of users or other directory objects.

The directory service agent (DSA) periodically runs a cleanup task that recovers space from deleted objects in the directory for reuse by Active Directory.

Resolution

Check the registry on the server to determine the disk volume that contains the Active Directory database. Under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTDS\Parameters registry key, the value DSA Database file contains the path of the file in which Active Directory keeps its database. If the Active Directory database is stored on the C: drive and this is the same drive that contains the system TEMP directory (usually C:\TEMP), delete all of the files in the TEMP directory.

Determine what directories are using the most disk space. Using Windows® Explorer, right-click on each directory and select Properties. The disk space used by the directory sub-tree will appear on the Properties page. After you determine what is causing the directories to grow, run Ntdsutil.exe to compact files, move files to another volume, or move transaction logs to another volume.

CAUTION: Use Ntdsutil with great care. Improper use of Ntdsutil can destroy directory data.

If Active Directory ran low on disk space during a server backup, the problem may be due to the space used by temporary files created by the backup process. If this is the case, you can configure Active Directory to keep its backup files on a different volume.

As a general tip, it is a good idea to put the Active Directory database on its own file volume with only Administrator access so that the disk space available to Active Directory cannot be reduced by other applications.