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Domain Discovery and Consolidation

PingCastle provides three methods for discovering and mapping domains in your environment:

Scan all reachable domains and automatically generate a consolidated report with cartography.

Interactive Mode: Run PingCastle in healthcheck mode and enter * when prompted for the domain.

Command Line:

PingCastle.exe --healthcheck --server *

This scans all reachable domains, enables reachable mode, and automatically creates a consolidation report. The process typically takes a few minutes to an hour depending on your environment size.

Option 2: Report Consolidation​

If you already have multiple XML healthcheck reports, you can consolidate them to generate overview reports and trust maps.

Prerequisites: All XML report files must be in the current directory (or subdirectories). If duplicate reports exist, PingCastle uses only the most recent.

Interactive Mode: Select "conso" from the menu.

Command Line:

PingCastle.exe --hc-conso

This consolidates all available XML reports and generates summary reports with trust relationship maps. You can combine XML reports generated from multiple locations to create a comprehensive view of your infrastructure.

note

PingCastle performs consolidation automatically when using --server * for automatic domain discovery.

Output Files

Consolidation generates three HTML files:

  • ad_hc_summary.html: Summary of all reports with the same structure as detailed reports but at a higher level. See an example summary report.
  • ad_hc_summary_full_node_map.html: Complete trust relationship map showing all discovered domains and trusts.
  • ad_hc_summary_simple_node_map.html: Simplified trust relationship map for easier visualization.

Option 3: Quick Domain Cartography​

For a fast network map without full healthcheck scores (under 5 minutes), use the cartography mode.

Interactive Mode: Select "carto" from the menu.

Command Line:

PingCastle.exe --carto

This option discovers all reachable domains, performs a lightweight scan, and generates trust relationship maps. The SID Filtering status is accurate, but individual domain scores aren't available. Scans run in parallel for speed.

note

You can't combine cartography reports run from multiple locations. For comprehensive multi-location data, use Option 1 or Option 2 instead.