In order to start using Group Policy, we first need to create a Group Policy Object. Most commonly referred to as a GPO, this object contains the settings that we want to deploy. It also contains the information necessary for domain joined systems to know which machines and users get these settings and which ones do not. It is critical that you plan GPO assignment carefully. It is easy to create a policy that applies to every domain-joined system in your entire network but, depending on what settings you configure in that policy, this can be detrimental to some of your servers. Often I find that admins who are only somewhat familiar with Group Policy are making use of a built-in GPO called Default Domain Policy. This, by default, applies to everything in your network. Sometimes this is actually what you want to accomplish. Most of the time, it is not!

We are going to use this section to detail the process of creating a new GPO, and use some...