AD drawer · Active Directory Management & Auditing
Active Directory management and auditing tools, by the chore they remove
On the ticket: “Who owns this account, who changed it, and is it still needed?”
Active Directory rarely breaks in dramatic ways in a small organisation. It decays. Computer accounts for laptops that were recycled two years ago stay enabled. A contractor’s account outlives the contract. Someone adds a colleague to Domain Admins “for an afternoon”. Then an auditor, an insurer or a new security lead asks who changed what, and the only honest answer is a Security log that rolled over last week. The tools in this drawer exist to slow that decay: some make the routine changes faster and more consistent, others keep a record of every change so the question can be answered later.
The two jobs pull in different directions, and it helps to name them. Management tools — RSAT and ManageEngine ADManager Plus here — change the directory: create users, move computers, reset passwords, clean up stale objects. Auditing tools — Netwrix Auditor, and the native event logs they build on — watch the directory and report on changes. We compare them on the questions this site asks of everything: what chore goes away, what rights the tool itself needs, and what trail it leaves. A product that needs a service account with rights across the whole domain deserves more scrutiny than one that runs with the rights of the admin sitting in front of it. The ordering and criteria are explained on our methodology page.
6 AD management and auditing tools side by side
RSAT comes first because every other tool here is measured against it. The commercial products follow, then general tools that help with specific AD chores — Sysinternals for logon sessions and AD Explorer, Remote Desktop Audit for RDP logon history. Click a tool name for the desk review; “Visit” links lead to the maker’s own website.
| Tool | Licence | Platforms | Key feature | Best for | Rights it needs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT)Microsoft | With Windows licence | Windows 10 (Oct 2018 update or later) and Windows 11 Pro/Enterprise; Windows Server | Active Directory Users and Computers, Group Policy Management, DNS, DHCP consoles and the ActiveDirectory PowerShell module | Every Windows admin workstation — the baseline other AD tools are measured against | Grants nothing itself — you get exactly what your AD account is delegated |
| ManageEngine ADManager PlusManageEngine (Zoho Corp.) | Commercial | Web console; installs on Windows Server 2012–2025 or Windows 10/11 | Template-based bulk provisioning, stale-account reports and delegated help-desk roles | Teams that want joiner/mover/leaver work and help-desk resets done through scoped roles | A service account with the AD rights for the tasks you automate; technicians get scoped roles |
| Netwrix AuditorNetwrix | Commercial | On-premises; installs on Windows Server 2012 R2–2025 or Windows 10/11 (not on a DC) | Who-changed-what-when reports and alerts for AD, Group Policy, logons and file servers | Organisations that must answer auditors and need change history kept beyond event-log retention | A data-collection account with read access to logs and configuration; audit policy set on DCs |
| Windows Admin CenterMicrosoft | With Windows licence | Browser-based; gateway on Windows Server 2016–2025 or local client on Windows 11 | Browser console for services, events, processes, updates, roles and storage over PowerShell remoting | Small teams replacing a pile of MMC snap-ins and RDP-to-the-server habits | Gateway access plus admin rights on each managed server via WinRM / PowerShell remoting |
| Sysinternals SuiteMicrosoft | Freeware | Windows client and Windows Server; ARM64 and Nano Server builds; also in the Microsoft Store | Around seventy utilities — Process Explorer, Process Monitor, Autoruns, PsTools, TCPView, Sysmon | Admins who need to see exactly what a process, service or logon is doing | Most tools want an elevated prompt; PsExec needs admin rights on the remote host |
| LizardSystems Remote Desktop AuditLizardSystems | Commercial | Windows 8/8.1/10, Windows Server 2012–2019 (vendor’s published list) | Builds an RDP logon/logoff history from the event logs of the computers you point it at | Answering “who connected to this server over RDP, and when” without hand-filtering Event Viewer | Permission to read the event logs on each target (admin or Event Log Readers) |
Written independently: TopNet247 is none of these vendors, and table position cannot be bought. We verified licence and platform details on each maker’s website as of the date shown above.
How to choose
- Decide whether you are changing AD or watching it
If the pain is repetitive changes — onboarding, offboarding, group membership, password resets — look at management tools and templates. If the pain is answering “who did this?”, you need auditing, and no amount of faster provisioning will help. Some teams need both; buy them for their own reasons.
- Start from what RSAT and PowerShell already do
Get-ADUser, Search-ADAccount -AccountInactive and Get-ADComputer with LastLogonTimestamp answer most cleanup questions for free. A commercial tool earns its price by scheduling, delegating and documenting that work, not by the query itself.
- Look hard at the service account
Management and auditing platforms need an account that can read — and often write — across the directory. Ask exactly which rights are required, whether they can be delegated to specific OUs instead of granted domain-wide, and how the credential is stored on the server running the product.
- Turn on the audit policy before you buy a reporting tool
Change reports depend on Advanced Audit Policy settings on your domain controllers, such as Audit Directory Service Changes and Audit User Account Management. Enable them through a GPO, check events 5136 and 4738 appear, and size the Security log. Auditing products rely on the same data.
- Price the model, not the headline
AD tools are licensed per domain, per technician, per enabled user account or per audited system. Count what you will actually license — enabled users, help-desk seats, domains — before comparing quotes, and check the vendor’s current pricing page because models change.
Where PowerShell is still the right answer
For a single domain with a few hundred users and one or two admins, the ActiveDirectory PowerShell module that ships with RSAT covers stale-account reports, bulk changes from CSV and group membership exports. What it does not give you is delegation with guard rails, a scheduled report that lands in someone’s inbox, or a tamper-resistant change history — those are what ADManager Plus and Netwrix Auditor sell. Buy them when the scripts start depending on one person, or when you have to show evidence to someone outside IT. Every product link on this page goes to the vendor’s own site; see where-to-get for how to verify what you receive.
Vendor pages: Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) learn.microsoft.com · ManageEngine ADManager Plus manageengine.com · Netwrix Auditor netwrix.com · Windows Admin Center learn.microsoft.com · Sysinternals Suite learn.microsoft.com · LizardSystems Remote Desktop Audit lizardsystems.com
Questions admins ask about AD management and auditing tools
How do I install RSAT on Windows 11?
RSAT ships as Features on Demand. Open Settings > System > Optional features > View features and add the tools you need, or run Get-WindowsCapability -Online -Name RSAT* | Add-WindowsCapability -Online from an elevated PowerShell prompt. Microsoft lists Pro and Enterprise editions only; Home editions cannot run it.
How can I find stale computer accounts in AD?
Search-ADAccount -AccountInactive -ComputersOnly -TimeSpan 90.00:00:00 lists computers that have not logged on in 90 days, using the replicated LastLogonTimestamp attribute. Review the list, disable and move rather than delete, and wait a cycle before removing anything. Our how-to on stale computer accounts covers the full process.
Which events record Active Directory changes?
With Directory Service Changes auditing enabled, domain controllers log 5136 (object modified), 5137 (created), 5139 (moved) and 5141 (deleted). Account management auditing adds events such as 4720 (user created), 4726 (user deleted), 4728 and 4732 (member added to a group) and 4738 (user changed).
Do I need both ADManager Plus and Netwrix Auditor?
Not necessarily. ADManager Plus is primarily for making changes and producing reports about the directory’s current state; Netwrix Auditor is primarily for recording and reporting changes over time. Some organisations use one for each job; smaller ones often start with RSAT plus native auditing and add one product where it hurts most.
Is a free edition enough for a small domain?
Sometimes. ADManager Plus has a free edition with object limits, and Netwrix offers trials. Check the current limits on each vendor’s page against your object count, and remember that a trial which covers your whole environment for a few weeks is often the best way to see whether the reports answer your real questions.
Keep going
Other drawers
Money note: every vendor link here is a direct, commission-free link to that maker’s official site. Details in our affiliate disclosure.