TABLE OF CONTENTS Since its introduction with Windows 2000, Group Policy has been a major focal point. Because Group Policy provides for over 1,000 different desktop and system alterations, each affecting the users' experience to simplify management and thereby reduce costs of ownership, expect this topic to continue to garner a large amount of attention when you're designing an AD infrastructure.
In this section, we will expand on our earlier example while also adding some new examples to illustrate the benefits and proper design of Group Policy and GPOs. We also analyze different default GPOs and see how each plays a role in our AD design. We will further expand the concept of delegation and see in greater detail how GPOs and a proper OU infrastructure can provide simplified administration through delegation of tasks. Let's begin by looking at the requirements for Group Policy implementation.
Group policies affect Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003 based machines. Implementation of policies for Windows 9 x and Windows NT-based machines is accomplished through the limited capabilities of the system policy editor for the respective operating systems. Windows 9 x and Windows NT system policies provided limited lockdown and deployment capabilities in Windows NT-based domains and still provide only limited capabilities for Windows 9 x and Windows NT clients within an Active Directory environment. Several features are available through Group Policy that were not available using the previous generation system policy editor.
System Policy settings that...
