Friday, March 12, 2010

Running a Customized Report, showing detailed information about the DCs

The AD MP comes with some pre packed reports which are nice. But what if you want to run a report showing all the DCs and their FSMO roles, IP addresses, FQDNs and so on? This report is not available by default but is easily created.

How? it goes without saying that the latest version of the AD MP must be loaded, configured and in working order.

  • Go to Reporting > Microsoft Generic Report Library > Custom Configuration report. Double click it.
  • The Report Parameter area will be displayed. Select for From: ‘Yesterday’. Click the Add Group button.
  • Type ‘Controller’ and hit the Search button. The AD Domain Controller Group (Windows 200x Server) Groups will be displayed. Select the correct Group matching your AD environment. Click Add > OK.
  • For Report Fields select these fields:
    - Display Name
    - AD Site 
    - DNS Domain Name
    - DNS Forest Name 
    - IP Address
    - Infrastructure Master
    - Global Catalog Server 
    - DC Hostname 
    - PDC Emulator 
    - RID Master
    - Schema Master
    - RODC
    (Beware: the list of Report Fields isn’t set in alphabetical order..)
  • Run the report

    This Report can be Published as well. As start date select an offset like –7 days. Give the Report a Logical Name AND a good explanation and publish it. This way this Report is always available and runs when double clicked, without the need to add/adjust any parameters.

  • 3 comments:

    John Bradshaw said...

    That's a great report Marnix.
    Thx for pointing it out.
    Which reports do you think would be nice to display in a Public area on a large screen?
    Cheers,
    John Bradshaw

    John Bradshaw said...

    Oh, and is there a way to automate a "publicly displayed" report so that a daily updated report would show?

    Marnix Wolf said...

    Hi John,

    thanks for your compliments. I would not display any report in a Public Area since it is statical information. A better approach is to use diagram views or software from Savision Live Maps in order to show some state views. Is more attractive.