ADFS Local Claims Provider Connections Test

A Local Claims Provider trust object represents AD LDS or third-party LDAP-based directories in an AD FS farm. A local claims provider trust object consists of a variety of identifiers, names, and rules that identify this LDAP-based directory to the local Federation Service. The Local Claims Provider trust enables the AD FS server to establish trust relationships with other identity providers for authenticating the users smoothly. The local claims provider is responsible for authenticating the users in the target environment. If authentication services provided by the claims provider are disconnected or downtime/outages in the claims provider slows down the query processing and authentication process, it may delay the user login process and deny user access to critical applications. This is why, administrators should continuously monitor if the authentication and query execution processes are performed by the claims provider without significant delays. This can be achieved using the ADFS Local Claims Provider Connections test.

This test continuously monitors the local claims providers configured in the target AD FS server and reports the average time taken by each claims provider to execute the queries and authenticate the users. If the average time taken by any local claims provider is found to be very high, then it may indicate potential issues such as network disruptions and service unavailability in the claims provider. This enables the administrators to take necessary actions before the users complain. In addition, this test also reports the number of times that the connection failures encountered by each local claims provider.

Target of the test : An AD FS server

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each local claims provider configured in the target AD FS server

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port at which the AD FS server listens.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Average authentication time	Indicates the average time taken by this local claims provider to authenticate the users.	Seconds	Compare the value of this measure across the local claims providers to identify which provider took maximum time to authenticate the users.
Average query time	Indicates the average time taken by this local claims provider to execute the queries.	Seconds	Comparing the value of this measure across the local claims providers will reveal the local claims provider that took maximum time to execute the queries.
Connection failures	Indicates the number of times that the connection failures encountered by this local claims provider.	Number	Ideally, the value of this measure should be very low.