Windows Tip Sheet
Attack of the Queries
Test out various Active Directory scenarios with Microsoft's ADTest tool.
Ever wondered how much your Active Directory infrastructure can handle? I’ve
recently been doing a lot of load testing on 64-bit machines (watch for an article
in an upcoming issue of
Redmond magazine), and Active Directory is an
obvious application to test as it’s part of the core operating system.
Stress testing AD can be difficult, but Microsoft provides a free tool called
ADTest that does the job quite well. Whether you’re evaluating new hardware
for domain controllers, or just want to see what your environment (duplicated
in a lab, of course; don’t do this to your production network) is capable
of, ADTest fills the bill.
ADTest will, as you might expect, pound your domain with various types of queries,
and you can exercise a lot of control over what types of queries it uses to
better represent a production environment under varying conditions. Because
it’s capable of generating generic queries, you can also use it to create
organizational units and other objects, helping to fully populate a test domain
with however many thousands of objects you like (in stress testing a 64-bit
domain controller, for example, I needed an AD database of about 2GB in size).
The tool comes with a handful of tests built in, allowing you to run common
test scenarios with very little setup. For example, it can simulate interactive
logons, object searches, attribute modification and more.
ADTest doesn’t run on Win2000 computers, but it can run against
them. That means you can run ADTest on a WinXP or Win2003 box and target Win2000
and Win2003 domain controllers.
By the way, there’s a common spyware/adware program called ADTest, too.
If you’re searching Google for more information on Microsoft’s tool,
as opposed to the spyware, add “-spyware -adware” to your Google
keywords. That’ll help cut the result set down.
More Resources
- Download ADTest here.
- Blog on ADTest here.
About the Author
Don Jones is a multiple-year recipient of Microsoft’s MVP Award, and is Curriculum Director for IT Pro Content for video training company Pluralsight. Don is also a co-founder and President of PowerShell.org, a community dedicated to Microsoft’s Windows PowerShell technology. Don has more than two decades of experience in the IT industry, and specializes in the Microsoft business technology platform. He’s the author of more than 50 technology books, an accomplished IT journalist, and a sought-after speaker and instructor at conferences worldwide. Reach Don on Twitter at @concentratedDon, or on Facebook at Facebook.com/ConcentratedDon.