Group Policy Central

If you downloaded and installed Windows Server 2012 last week and your are also running the Windows 8 RTM you may have realised that the Remote Server Administrator Tools for Windows 8 RTM were not released yet. The RSAT tools are of course the all the admin tools you require to manage you Windows Server 2012 features remotely therefore having to reduce the times you need logon to a server to perform any admin task. The most important of tool that comes with RSAT is the Group Policy Management Console   .  Finally Microsoft has now released the tools and you can now download them from here  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28972

I was also pleased to read in the release notes that you no longer need us the “Turn Windows features on or off” option to have the tools installed as they are all loaded automatically.

NOTE: In this release of Remote Server Administration Tools, all tools are enabled by default. There is no need to open Turn Windows features on or off in Windows 8, and enable the tools that you want to use.

This was the behaviour I noticed in the release preview and is nice to see they have continued it in the final version.

Microsoft has just released / announced the availability of the “Release Preview” (a.k.a Release Candidate) of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. But they have also released the “Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 8 Release Preview” which allows you to install all essential admin tools needed to manage Group Policy in your environment.

I am still downloading and install the software myself so I have nothing new to report yet, but while you wait below are all the download links to get your started… .

If you have not paid much attention to Windows 8 until now you can find out more on Paul Thurrott detail review  at http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-release-preview-ultimate-delta-guide-143044

Download links:

• Windows Server 2012 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/2012-overview.aspx
• Windows 8 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/hh771457.aspx?ocid=wc-tn-eval
• Remote Server Admin Tools http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28972&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all

If you edit Group Policy on you local computer you will be glad to hear that Microsoft has just released the Remove Server Admin Tools update for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 which has an updated version of GPMC. This resolves the "The update does not apply to your system” error message if you had re-installed Windows 7 and loaded Service Pack 1 and then you tried to install RSAT.

Get it here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d

Related Article: How to download and install the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC)

Even though Group Policy Preference have been out for a number of years (since Windows Server 2008) it is still a relatively unknown feature of group policy. Therefore this is the first of a few articles I am going to be writing about some of the basic features of Group Policy Preferences. So to start off with I am going to cover a few FAQ on what you need to do start using all the Group Policy Preference goodness.

Do I need to extend the schema to use Group Policy Preferences?

NO. There are no schema extensions required to support Group Policy Preferences as they work by only creating a folder called “Preference” under the User and/or Computer folder in the SYSVOL.

What are the minimum version of domain mode or domain controllers I need to support Group Policy Preferences?

Unofficially Windows 2000 Domain Mode with Windows 2000 DC’s will work fine. However officially it is what ever the minimum support OS and domain mode of Active Directory is at the time.

What software do I need to install to use Group Policy Preference?

To make it easy the table below outlines what software you need to install to enabled group policy preference on the client and to make changes to the

In my previous article In this article Best Practice:Active Directory Structure Guidelines – Part 1 I spoke about some of the guidelines I personally use when developing an Active Directory OU structure. In this next part I will discuss some guidelines I use when designing a Group Policy Object infrastructure.

Ideally you should make the the Active Directory OU and GPO design decision together to best ensure that you have the most efficient design possible. However if you have an existing OU structure designed a lot of these guidelines can still be applied to most existing environments.

As in Part 1 these are simply guidelines that I use and should not be taken as hard an fast rules. I quite often finding myself having to break these rules due to real world conflicts or just because one rule might conflict with the other rule. If you do find your self in a situation where you are not sure which path to take try to chose the option that will result in the least administrative effort in the long term.

Continue reading ‘Best Practice: Group Policy Design Guidelines – Part 2’ »