Now that new Windows technology (in the dual garb of Windows Vista and the Windows 2008 Server) has arrived on the scene, many network planners are taking a closer look at some of the architectural changes that Microsoft has made to the Group Policy structure.
The underlying concept of Group Policy hasn’t changed – it’s still fundamentally a Great Big Network Registry Editor. Make a setting, and Group Policy enforces it for you from that point forward.
Having said that, the implementation of Group Policy has evolved in several useful and interesting ways:
• New status as an operating system Service
• Network Location Awareness
• Improved log file viewing
• New source file format (ADMX)
• New migration/editing utility
• Central-store management
• Dynamic source file loading
• Multi-language support
• Multiple local Group Policy Objects (GPOs)
I’ll explore each of these key changes in future blog posts.
See recent blog posts:
The Look and Feel of Server 2008
Meet Windows Server 2008 ‘Server Manager’ — your new management cockpit
Server Core – A minimalist approach to managing WS2008
How to get started with Server Core in WS2008
