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)

Create, Replace, Update, or Delete

During the implementation of your first Group Policy Preference setting, you will likely find yourself staring at four different choices. Not all preferences behave this way, but many do. This happens because most preference settings (as well as almost anything you do inside the Windows operating system) is really just a setting or changing of something inside the registry. When telling Group Policy to put registry settings into place, you have the choice of handling that registry key in one of four different ways: Create, Replace, Update, or Delete. If you acronym that out, it spells CRUD! Hilariously, Microsoft themselves even refer to this selection of choices as "CRUD" in some documentation.

Let's look at an example. In the following screenshot, you can see that I am creating a GPO that contains a new Preference setting. This...