Is there a profiler for Active Directory queries?

Question

Hi,

I have an application which uses Active Directory intensively. I want to know if there is a way to know exactly what queries are sent and how much time they take on server side.

I can always do some sort of very basic profiler by measuring the time elapsed during the queries through Stopwatch, but it don't help neither to see the queries, nor to know if the time spent is the time the server takes to process the query, or the time lost sending and receiving data through the network or doing stuff on client side.

So is there a profiler for Active Directory similar to the one for SQL Server, or something within .NET Framework which enables to get this data?

Answer 1

That data isn't available - there's no profiling API for Active Directory directly. What you could perhaps do is get the time for it indirectly. If you make a similar network request to the right machine, but one for which you know there will be no processing time at all (or minimal), then you can measure the effect of network overhead.

You can then come at it from the other end. If you use Event Tracing for Windows (not supported by many profilers, but is in there for some, eg ANTS Performance Profiler), then you can track the AD events as they happen, and so separate out the time that is taken with the application from the time for these events to happen. You should then have all the bits you need in order to figure out what's going on, I think.