Final Thoughts

In the beginning, Microsoft created Group Policy, and it was good. Now, you can take this goodness and leverage it to protect and serve your subjects.

At the beginning of this book, you learned the ins and outs of Group Policy. You learned how to get around in the GPMC and how to script Group Policy operations. You went on and leveraged your Group Policy knowledge to implement a secure environment with Group Policy and a robust IntelliMirror environment to allow your users to roam freely online and offline and maintain the same user experience.

This, the final chapter, talked about what happens beyond IntelliMirror. Here, you used Shadow Copies to further ensure that users' data is protected should they inadvertently delete or overwrite it. You used Remote Installation Services to bring back a Windows machine from the dead.

I hope you can fully appreciate the beauty in this holistic approach to user settings and data management. No longer are users tied to a specific desktop or laptop as a single point of failure. If a machine gets lost or dies, the user environment (Profile), the data (My Documents with Redirected Folders), and the applications (via GPSI) are always preserved on the server for when that new machine arrives.

Dropping a new machine on the desk (perhaps with RIS) is like magic: Roaming Profiles, Redirected Folders, Offline Folders, Disk Quotas, and Group Policy Software Installation perform exactly as they did before the machine blew up. You'll bring it all back for the user with one floppy. Maybe even no floppies. You'll be a hero.

Note 

Thank you for reading this book and using it to its fullest! Let's keep the information flowing ! Come join your peers at www.GPanswers.com for ongoing support of the material in this book. You'll find free downloads, training services, a third-party tools listing, and a community discussion forum regarding all Group Policy, Profiles, IntelliMirror, Shadow Copies, and RIS topics! See you online!