I get these sorts of emails, at least the security audit aggregation stuff too. Just remember for me that I have a section of a very expensive SAN shelf allocated to my audit collection project, a pair of very well equipped servers clustered running SQL (expensive), a web frontend running SQL RS (cheap), and my time as a consultant maintaining it (very expensive). This stuff adds up.
Thanks, Brian Desmond [EMAIL PROTECTED] c - 312.731.3132 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP] Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2005 9:33 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Knowing when users were deleted. <here she goes again.. I know ... I'm terrible at lurking> In SBSland we have a daily monitoring email [well ... I send it daily anyway, but it's configurable] and it looks at the event logs and tells daily health status of my server. Like today my email tells me my server has been running for 6 hours [just rebooted it last night] and it gives me an overview if auto services are not running, critical alerts and critical errors in the event logs. It tells me memory/disk size, cpu use, top processes, if the backup ran, and aggregates the alerts from all the log files. It's a health mon that dumps it's data into a msde database and builds the email to be sent internally or externally. What it does now, is only pulls data from the one box, the SBS box. but I can go into health mon and build my own monitors and grab those event logs from other machines [need to so that just haven't gotten around to it]. Right now if someone [usually me] fat fingers a password, for example, it gives me an alert in the email of the last time it occurred and how many occurrances. Basically it's tracking the critical alerts in all the event logs and summarizing the events along with the number of events in the email [and showing the last time the event occurred so you can start your investigation from that point back] For SBS ....it's in the box, it's a gui wizard that builds this pretty little html email that my server builds and hits me every morning at 6 a.m and says "Hey here's how I'm doing...how are you?". It's the mid market that doesn't have this. [and yes, we've told Mothership Redmond they need to steal this sucker and put it in the mid market server bundle] Does it make me more aware of events on my server? Oh you betcha it does. Which is why this needs to be ....as you say...native in small and medium servers....heck I'd strongly argue that no server should be shipped without some admin somewhere getting an in your face report on that sucker. I'll go to Frys and buy bigger harddrives if I need to. But give me a big fat audit log file and I'm a happy camper. Al Mulnick wrote: >I'll see your Eurocents and add raise you two. :) > >I fully understand where you're coming from Ulf. Adding this information >into the DIT when it is currently possible to get is something that grates >against common sense and common engineering principles even if you subscribe >to belts and braces methodologies. > >However, I think two things make this a worthwhile request with a big >payoff. First to Laura's point about diminishing returns. I agree, at some >point there will be diminishing returns. I also believe that as hardware >gets bigger (i.e. Standard 80 GB hard drives, 1 GB memory in workstation >machines, etc. [1]) the bar gets raised until we get to the diminishing >return. Since we're targeting 80/20 out of the box [2] it seems reasonable >that 80% of the deployments would benefit from such a change. The other 20 >would be those that a) don't care or know about such things and b) those >that can't tolerate the additional overhead and therefore wouldn't want to >deploy it. I say tough pickles to them. :) Seriously, this could be on by >default but configurable (group policy?) to disable it as a performance >issue etc. > >Second, I think that the major benefit is the ability to actually get usable >information native to the product vs. having to invest in a third party >product. Why? Because today in order to get that information I have to have >something that scrapes the Security logs looking for such information. Is >this a good idea? I think it is. Is it something that could be native? I >think it could and should be native if technically feasible. > >Making us look in a particular DC's event logs is more difficult than it >should be without yet another product. That's fine for the really large >companies that have deeper pockets, and larger needs. For the small to >medium businesses, it should not be so difficult nor should it *require* SQL >licensing or expertise. > > > >[1] I'm not saying that the quality has kept up, only that the hardware is >bigger, faster, stronger and cheaper. >[2] I'm making that up, but it sounds reasonable > > > > >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ulf B. >Simon-Weidner >Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2005 4:42 PM >To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org >Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Knowing when users were deleted. > > >Hmm. > >Do we really want to excuse prior failure of proper auditing by putting more >data into AD? Wouldn't that lead into every request of non-configured >auditing to requests for extending the AD? Do it right the first way. > >I completely agree that we should make the people more auditing aware, and >it would be great to have a centralized auditing together with some force of >configuration instead of the per server events and auditing which is rearly >configured. > >However I'm not sure if I want this kind of data in the AD. > >Just my Eurocents. > >Ulf > >|-----Original Message----- >|From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >|[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Laura >|E. Hunter >|Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2005 10:28 PM >|To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org >|Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Knowing when users were deleted. >| >|Various thoughts from this thread: >| >|[1] I agree with Al and Paul[1] on a desire for that sort of metadata. >|I'm not as convinced of the trade-off value of bloating the DIT for >|full undelete information, particularly in monster big environments. >|For my teeny-tiny single domain it probably wouldn't be that >|bad of a hit, but I imagine that the laws of diminishing >|returns would quickly set in. >| >|[2] Please finish the thought, Brett, I'm sure I'd find it >|helpful/enlightening/informative even if it's only speaking in >|hypotheticals. >| >|[3] It's Gil and Darren's turn to crack me up today, I guess >|joe is taking a break. >| >| >|[1] *waves* Hi Paul! Glad to see you alive post-Summit. >| >|- L >|List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx >|List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx >|List archive: >|http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ >| > > >List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx >List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx >List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ >List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx >List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx >List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ > > > -- Letting your vendors set your risk analysis these days? http://www.threatcode.com List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
