Learning Windows Server 2003, Second Edition

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2008 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Group Policy and IntelliMirror

Windows Server 2003 offers a marvelous command and control system for your

organization’s computers called Group Policy (GP). With GP, you can manage user-

and computer-based configurations, which you can apply en masse to computers in

a particular Active Directory site, OU, or domain.

In this chapter, I’ll introduce you to GP and its features and functions. I’ll show you

the differences between NT 4.0–style system policies and 2000-and-later-based GPs.

I’ll take you through creating and editing GPs and expanding or refining their scope.

I’ll show you how inheritance and overriding work, and I’ll look at using the Win-

dows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface and the new Resultant Set of

Policy (RSoP) tools in Windows Server 2003 to filter and further granulate policy

application. Then you’ll see the similarities and differences between local and

domain GP. Finally, I’ll review troubleshooting strategies and considerations for

wide-scale GP deployment.

An Introduction to Group Policy

Group policies consist of five distinct components:

Administrative templates

Configure registry-based policies. You’ll see what this really entails in a bit.

Folder redirection

Alters the target location of various elements in the UI, such as My Documents,

to other places on the network.

Scripts

Execute when computers are first booted and shut down. They also can run dur-

ing user logon and logoff.