11 Group Policy Management Improvements in Windows Server "8" Beta NedPyle [MSFT] 6 Apr 2012 5:13 PM Hi all, Ned here again. If you've been supporting group policy for years, you’ve grown used to its behaviors. For something designed to manage an enterprise, its initial implementation wasn’t easy to manage itself. The Group Policy Management Console improved this greatly after Windows Server 2003, but there was room for enhancement. Windows Server "8" Beta introduces a number of interesting Group Policy management changes to advance things. These include detecting overall replication consistency as well as remote policy refresh and easier resultant set of policy troubleshooting. Windows 8 Consumer Preview benefits from some of these changes as well. Let's dig in. Infrastructure Status Once upon a time, someone wrote a Windows 2000 resource kit utility called gpotool.exe (no longer supported). It was supposed to tell you if the SYSVOL and AD portions of a group policy were synchronized on a given domain controller and between DCs in a domain. If it returned message "Policies OK", you were supposed to be golden. Unfortunately, gpotool is not very bright or honest, which is why we do not recommend customers use it. It only checks the gpt.ini files in SYSVOL. Anyone who manages group policy knows that each GP GUID folder in SYSVOL contains many files critical to applying group policy. The gpt.ini existing is immaterial if the registry.pol does not exist or is some heinous stale version. Furthermore, gpotool bases everything on the gpt.ini version matching between AD and SYSVOL and alerting you if they don't. Except that the version matching alone has not mattered since Windows 2000 and file consistency checking is super important. Enter Windows Server "8" Beta. When you fire up GPMC from a server or RSAT, then navigate to a domain node, you now see a new Status tab (more properly called the Group Policy Infrastructure Status tool). GPMC sets the DC it connected to as a baseline source of comparison. By default, that would be the PDC emulator, which GPMC tries to connect to first. If you click Detect Now, the computer running GPMC directly reaches out to all the domain controllers in that domain using the LDAP and SMB protocols. It compares all the SYSVOL group policy file hashes, file counts, ACLs, and GPT versions against the baseline server. It also checks each DC's AD group policy object count, versions, and ACLS against the baseline. If everything is copacetic, you get the good news right there in the UI. Microsoft's official enterprise support blog for AD DS and more All About Windows Server Cloud OS Blogs Datacenter Management Client Management Virtualization, VDI & Remote Desktop File & Storage & High Availability Windows Server Management Identity & Access Ask the Directory Services Team Page 1 of 7 Group Policy Management Improvements in Windows Server "8" Beta - Ask the Dire... 8/2/2014 http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2012/04/06/group-policy-management-improve...
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11
Group Policy Management Improvements in Windows Server
"8" Beta
NedPyle [MSFT] 6 Apr 2012 5:13 PM
Hi all, Ned here again. If you've been supporting group policy for years, you’ve grown used to its behaviors. For something
designed to manage an enterprise, its initial implementation wasn’t easy to manage itself. The Group Policy Management
Console improved this greatly after Windows Server 2003, but there was room for enhancement.
Windows Server "8" Beta introduces a number of interesting Group Policy management changes to advance things. These
include detecting overall replication consistency as well as remote policy refresh and easier resultant set of policy
troubleshooting. Windows 8 Consumer Preview benefits from some of these changes as well.
Let's dig in.
Infrastructure Status
Once upon a time, someone wrote a Windows 2000 resource kit utility called gpotool.exe (no longer supported). It was
supposed to tell you if the SYSVOL and AD portions of a group policy were synchronized on a given domain controller and
between DCs in a domain. If it returned message "Policies OK", you were supposed to be golden.
Unfortunately, gpotool is not very bright or honest, which is why we do not recommend customers use it. It only checks
the gpt.ini files in SYSVOL. Anyone who manages group policy knows that each GP GUID folder in SYSVOL contains many
files critical to applying group policy. The gpt.ini existing is immaterial if the registry.pol does not exist or is some heinous
stale version. Furthermore, gpotool bases everything on the gpt.ini version matching between AD and SYSVOL and
alerting you if they don't. Except that the version matching alone has not mattered since Windows 2000 and file
consistency checking is super important.
Enter Windows Server "8" Beta. When you fire up GPMC from a server or RSAT, then navigate to a domain node, you now
see a new Status tab (more properly called the Group Policy Infrastructure Status tool). GPMC sets the DC it connected
to as a baseline source of comparison. By default, that would be the PDC emulator, which GPMC tries to connect to first.
If you click Detect Now, the computer running GPMC directly reaches out to all the domain controllers in that domain
using the LDAP and SMB protocols. It compares all the SYSVOL group policy file hashes, file counts, ACLs, and GPT
versions against the baseline server. It also checks each DC's AD group policy object count, versions, and ACLS against the
baseline. If everything is copacetic, you get the good news right there in the UI.
Microsoft's official enterprise support blog for AD DS and more
All About
Windows Server
Cloud OS Blogs Datacenter
Management
Client
Management
Virtualization,
VDI & Remote
Desktop
File & Storage &
High Availability
Windows Server
Management
Identity & Access
Ask the Directory Services Team
Page 1 of 7Group Policy Management Improvements in Windows Server "8" Beta - Ask the Dire...