Book Image

Mastering Windows Group Policy

By : Jordan Krause
5 (1)
Book Image

Mastering Windows Group Policy

5 (1)
By: Jordan Krause

Overview of this book

This book begins with a discussion of the core material any administrator needs to know in order to start working with Group Policy. Moving on, we will also walk through the process of building a lab environment to start testing Group Policy today. Next we will explore the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) and start using the powerful features available for us within that interface. Once you are well versed with using GPMC, you will learn to perform and manage the traditional core tasks inside Group Policy. Included in the book are many examples and walk-throughs of the different filtering options available for the application of Group Policy settings, as this is the real power that Group Policy holds within your network. You will also learn how you can use Group Policy to secure your Active Directory environment, and also understand how Group Policy preferences are different than policies, with the help of real-world examples. Finally we will spend some time on maintenance and troubleshooting common Group Policy-related issues so that you, as a directory administrator, will understand the diagnosing process for policy settings. By the end of the book, you will be able to jump right in and use Group Policy to its full potential.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Managed versus unmanaged policies

There is an important distinction that every Group Policy administrator needs to understand about policies. There are two different types of policies, and they behave very differently. You can think of the two types as managed versus unmanaged, and also as policy versus preference. The word preference in this case is not necessarily the same distinction between the lumping of policy settings being separated from Group Policy Preference settings inside the Group Policy Management Editor. Those preferences we will be discussing in Chapter 6, Group Policy Preferences. In this sense, I am talking only about settings that exist in the traditional Policy locations inside GPME, namely inside the Administrative Templates section, but they are settings that behave more as if they are preferences in the user's eyes. On the flip side, policies are more...