Advanced Reporting: Generating Individual Storage Usage Reports For All Users In An Active Directory Group

Introduction

This article details the process of using F5 Data Manager to generate storage usage reports for all users in an Active Directory (AD) Group. A report is created for each user in the group from a single CIFS file system inventory. The capability of generating such reports is available only with the Advanced Reporting Module.

Problem

Generating a report for each user in an AD environment can be a challenging task if each user for whom the report is to be generated has to be manually entered. This can be achieved easily by just specifying the groups in the File System Report wizard.

Solution

An Advanced File System Detail report can be generated using file criteria and the AD groups to obtain a report for each user in the group. A prerequisite is a CIFS inventory of type Full. The first three steps are setup steps and the fourth step generates the reports. All steps are required.

Step 1: Create a Credential

Specify the credentials needed to contact the domain controller. Contacting the domain controller is required to translate the AD group into the list of individual users.

1. Select Credentials from the navigation menu.
2. Select Add from the Actions menu on the Credentials page.
3. Enter MainOffice-cred in the Display name field.
4. Enter your AD NetBIOS name in the Domain field. In this example: MAINOFFICE.
5. Enter Administrator for the Username field.
6. Enter the password for your domain administrator account; e.g. secureit for the Password field.
7. Click the Ok button to save the credentials.
   
8. Verify that the credential object is created.
   

Step 2: Identifying the Active Directory server

This step is required to set up the domain controller running the Active Directory to be used for the AD Group resolution.

1. Select Settings from the navigation menu.
2. Select the Advanced Reports tab on the Settings page.
3. Select the Active Directory Group subtab and select Add on the subtab.
4. Enter your AD NetBIOS name in the AD Domain Name field; e.g. MAINOFFICE.
5. Enter the IP address or Name of your domain controller e.g. 10.10.1.1 in the Domain Controller field depending on whether hostname resolution is in place or not on the Data Manager server.
6. Select the already-created credentials from the previous step (MainOffice-cred) from the pull-down menu for Credentials.
   
7. Click the Ok button.
8. Click the Save button to complete the AD server setup.
   
9. Verify that the server for AD Group resolution is created.

Step 3: Create a File Criteria to use all of the inventoried data

File criteria are used to select a subset of files for a report. In this case, we select all files.

1. Select File Criteria from the navigation menu.
2. On the File Criteria page, select Add from the Actions menu.
3. On the Add a File Criteria page, enter All Files in the Name entry field.
4. On the same page, select Add from the Actions menu to add a condition.
5. In the Create Condition dialog, select File Name Expression as the Type and matches as the Operator.
6. In the Regular Expression field, enter .* and click OK in the dialog to save the condition.
   
7. Click on OK on the page to save file criteria.
   
8. Verify that the file criteria is created.

Step 4: Create the storage usage reports using the wizard.

1. Select Reports from the navigation menu.
2. On the Reports page, select Add File system Report… from the Actions menu to invoke the File System Report wizard.
3. As in the following figure, enter UsageReport for the name.
4. Leave the default selection for the type as File System Detail.
5. Select file criteria (All files) created in the previous step.
6. Click Next.
   
7. On the second page, select a CIFS Inventory from which the reports will be generated and click Next.
8. On the third page, leave the default sections selected and click Next.
   
9. On the fourth page, select the check box for separate reports for Owners, provide the AD NetBIOS name MAINOFFICE for the AD Group, specify Sales as the Active Directory Groups, and click Next.
   
10. On the fifth and sixth pages, leave the default options selected.
11. On the last page, click Finish to start the report generation process.
12. Verify that reports are created by going to the Reports page.
13. Review that your usage reports are generated with names such as UsageReport-MAINOFFICE-<user name>. The variable <user name> is substituted with user names found in Active Directory group.

Summary

The use of Active Directory groups makes it easy to run reports for each user in the organization without specifying the user individually.

Author Bio

Arti Sood has been working in the field of quality assurance for over 10 years. She has been instrumental in assuring the quality of Data Manager for the past 3.5 years. Prior to joining F5 Networks, she worked on various applications for network simulation, wireless/wired network access, and peer-to-peer access.