adclient.cache.expires

This configuration parameter specifies the number of seconds before an object in the domain controller cache expires. This parameter controls how frequently the agent checks Active Directory to see if an object in the cache has been updated.

Every object retrieved from Active Directory is stamped with the system time when it enters the domain controller cache. Once an object expires, if it is needed again, the agent contacts Active Directory to determine whether to retrieve an updated object (because the object has changed) or renew the expired object (because no changes have been made). To make this determination, the agent checks the highestUSN for the expired object. If the value has changed, the agent retrieves the updated object. If the highestUSN has not changed, the agent resets the object’s timestamp to the new system time and retrieves the object from the cache.

If the agent is unable to contact Active Directory to check for updates to an expired object—for example because the computer is disconnected from the network—the agent returns the currently cached object until it can successfully contact Active Directory.

In most cases, you set this configuration parameter using group policy. You can, however, set it manually in the configuration file if you aren’t using group policy or want to temporarily override group policy.

If you are manually setting this parameter, the parameter value must be a positive integer. The following example sets the cache expiration time to 600 seconds (10 minutes):

adclient.cache.expires: 600

If this parameter is not defined in the configuration file, its default value is 3600 seconds (1 hour).

The adclient.cache.expires parameter defines the default cache expiration time for all objects types. You can override this default value for specific object types by appending the object type to the parameter name. For example, if you want to explicitly override the default expiration time for computer objects, you can define a different value for the adclient.cache.expires.computer parameter. The valid object types you can append to the parameter name to override the default value are: computer, extension, gc, group, search, user, user.membership and zone. Note that adclient.cache.expires.gc, if not set, does not default to the value of adclient.cache.expires, but has its own default value.