Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Connect Health is a feature that helps you manage and monitor your on-premises identity infrastructure. It provides valuable insights, real-time monitoring capabilities, and detailed diagnostics data for your Azure AD Connect, ADFS, and Domain Services. This tool is particularly crucial for helping you to plan, implement, and troubleshoot your infrastructure, which is an important area covered in the SC-300 Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator exam.
Implementing Azure AD Connect Health
To use Azure AD Connect Health, you need to have Azure AD Premium first. After confirming your subscription, follow the steps below to implement it.
- Login into the Azure portal.
- Visit the Azure Active Directory admin center.
- Go to ‘Azure AD Connect Health’ under ‘Manage’ section.
- Click on ‘Add’ to integrate a new instance and add relevant details.
- Upon successful registration, you can see your instance under ‘Registered items’.
Managing Azure AD Connect Health
Azure AD Connect Health dashboard provides a centralized view of your identity system’s functioning status, activities, and alerts.
- Alerts: You’ll get an overview of critical or warning alerts generated across your registered components. By deep-diving into these alerts, you can identify which particular operation or step failed, at what time, and with what error.
- Usage Analytics: Insight into authentication requests and data such as the total number of requests, failed requests, client or device location, etc.
- Performance Monitoring: Monitor performance indicators such as CPU, memory utilization, latency, etc.
- Sync Services: Monitor the sync engine of your Azure AD Connect, including sync cycles, sync errors, and connector status.
Azure AD Connect Health with ADFS
For those who use Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), Azure AD Connect Health can monitor and provide valuable insights on performance, usage, and alerts regarding your ADFS servers and Web Application Proxies.
Azure AD Connect Health with Sync
Azure AD Connect Sync health monitoring provides an easy-to-use interface that helps you address the issues occurring in your synchronizations. It operates by sending data about runs, errors, and performance to Azure for diagnostics and resolution.
Azure AD Connect Health Agent
The Azure AD Connect Health Agent needs to be installed on every server you wish to monitor. It sends data to Azure every 20 minutes or more frequently if there’s an update.
Overall, with Azure AD Connect Health, Microsoft provides powerful management capabilities for monitoring and managing your identity infrastructure. As an Identity and Access Administrator, mastering Azure AD Connect Health will help you ensure that all components of your infrastructure are working as expected and any issues are spotted and resolved promptly. This understanding can be highly beneficial when attempting the SC-300 exam, where knowledge about Azure AD management is tested.
Practice Test
True/False: Azure AD Connect Health helps monitor and gain insights into your on-premises identity infrastructure.
- True
Answer: True.
Explanation: Azure AD Connect Health performs these functions to ensure that you’re deriving best results from your infrastructure.
Which of the following services are monitored by Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Connect Health?
- a) Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)
- b) Azure AD Connect
- c) Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)
- d) All of the above
Answer: d) All of the above.
Explanation: Azure AD Connect Health monitors and provides insights for the following services: AD FS, Azure AD Connect & AD DS.
True/False: Azure Active Directory Connect Health is available with Azure Premium P
- False
Answer: False.
Explanation: Azure AD Connect Health is a feature of Azure AD Premium P1 and does not require Premium P
Which of these are ways that Azure AD Connect Health can send an alert?
- a) Email
- b) SMS
- c) Both a and b
- d) None of the above
Answer: c) Both a and b.
Explanation: Azure AD Connect Health can send an alert either through an email or a text message (SMS).
True/False: Azure AD Connect Health doesn’t need any additional agents installed for on-premise servers.
- False
Answer: False.
Explanation: You must install the Azure AD Connect Health agent on each of your servers in order to use Azure AD Connect Health service.
If your server is not showing in the Azure portal under Azure AD Connect Health, which of the following might be the problem?
- a) The server is not registered with Azure AD Connect Health.
- b) The server is encountering heartbeat failures
- c) Both a and b
- d) None of the above
Answer: c) Both a and b.
Explanation: If your server is missing from the portal, these two issues are probably causing the issue.
True/False: Functionality of the Azure AD Connect Health for sync is only available in the Azure portal.
- True
Answer: True.
Explanation: The functionality of Azure AD Connect Health for sync is only available in the Azure portal and there’s no local user interface.
Which of these is not a requirement for installing the Azure AD Connect Health agent?
- a) .NET Framework 1 or later.
- b) PowerShell 0 or later
- c) Windows Server 2012 or later
- d) .NET Framework 5 or later
Answer: d) .NET Framework 5 or later.
Explanation: .NET Framework 5 or later is not a requirement for installing the agent, whereas the other requirements are necessary.
True/False: Azure AD Connect Health supports an Active Directory forest that contains multiple domains.
- True
Answer: True.
Explanation: Azure AD Connect Health does support a multiple-domain AD forest.
Which of the following Azure AD Connect Health agent ports need to be open for outbound connections to *.blob.core.windows.net over TCP port 443
- a) 80
- b) 41
- c) 389
- d) None of the above
Answer: d) None of the above.
Explanation: No additional ports are required to be open for outbound connections to *.blob.core.windows.net over TCP port
Interview Questions
What is the primary purpose of Azure AD Connect Health?
Azure AD Connect Health helps administrators monitor and gain insights into their on-premises identity infrastructure. It provides robust monitoring, alerts, and insights for Microsoft Identity solutions, including Azure Active Directory, Azure AD Connect, and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
What Microsoft Identity solutions does Azure AD Connect Health support?
Azure AD Connect Health supports monitoring and insights for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), Azure AD Connect (including sync engine, password hash sync, pass-through authentication, and seamless single sign-on), and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
How does Azure AD Connect Health provide alerting functionality?
Azure AD Connect Health provides alerting when issues are detected. These alerts include detailed context about the issue to assist in troubleshooting. The alerts can be viewed on the Azure portal and can also be integrated with your existing alerting systems using Azure Monitor and Azure Monitor logs.
What are some of the typical issues detected by Azure AD Connect Health?
Azure AD Connect Health can detect a range of issues, including sync and export errors with Azure AD Connect, authentication issues in ADFS, latency issues in seamless single sign-on operations, and replication issues in Active Directory Domain Services.
How can I view the insights provided by Azure AD Connect Health?
Insights from Azure AD Connect Health can be viewed in the Azure portal. These insights include performance metrics, usage analytics, and other operational data.
Does Azure AD Connect Health provide risk-based conditional access insights?
Yes, Azure AD Connect Health provides insights and reporting for risk-based conditional access. These reports provide detailed visibility into sign-in activities, risky users, and risk detections.
Can Azure AD Connect Health assist in tracking who changes objects in your directory?
Yes, Azure AD Connect Health includes a feature called Audit Changes, which monitors changes to objects and attributes in your directory.
What type of notifications does Azure AD Connect Health send when it notices an issue?
Azure AD Connect Health sends both email notifications and portal notifications when it detects any issue.
How does Azure AD Connect Health assist in troubleshooting issues with Azure AD Connect?
Azure AD Connect Health’s alerting features provide detailed context about issues, which assists in troubleshooting. In addition to this, it provides insights into the state of the service and its components, giving a complete overview that can simplify the troubleshooting process.
What are the key features of Azure AD Connect Health with ADFS in terms of usage analytics?
With ADFS, Azure AD Connect Health provides insights both on a per-relying party basis, as well as details on which clients, browsers and operating systems are being used in your organization for better visibility.
Can Azure AD Connect Health view and manage multiple ADFS Farms?
Yes, Azure AD Connect Health can manage and monitor multiple ADFS Farms, each farm is treated as a separate instance within Azure AD Connect Health each with its own dashboard.
Can Azure AD Connect Health help manage LDAP queries on Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)?
Yes, Azure AD Connect Health has an agent for AD DS that logs and provides detailed information about LDAP queries which helps administrators manage the performance of these queries.
How can I integrate Azure AD Connect Health with my existing SIEM system?
Azure AD Connect Health logs can be integrated into Azure Monitor logs, which can then be sent to any SIEM system that can consume from an Azure Monitor logs workspace.
In what formats can Azure AD Connect Health export reports?
Azure AD Connect Health can export reports in CSV format for further analysis or integration with other systems.
Can Azure AD Connect Health monitor domain controllers or the Azure AD tenant?
Yes, Azure AD Connect Health includes support for monitoring both domain controllers with its Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) agent, and the Azure AD tenant.
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