Chapter 20. Group Policy

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Overview of Group Policy

• Working with the Group Policy Management Console

• Working with Group Policy Modeling and Results

• Default SBS Group Policy Objects

• Creating/Modifying SBS Group Policy Objects

• Troubleshooting Group Policy

Those who have been managing networks for any length of time know of the challenges associated with trying to maintain a standard environment across multiple computers. With the ever-important needs to keep antivirus and antispyware tools up-to-date, keep current on software and system updates, and even protect users from their own curiosity, system administrators are constantly working to make sure that software and settings are kept current on all the computers in the network. Fortunately, the implementation of group policy in Active Directory networks helps to automate many of these types of management processes.

Group policy is a complex and powerful component of Active Directory, yet it should not be intimidating to system administrators. This chapter breaks down group policy into its elemental components, describes the default policies created by SBS during setup and configuration, and provides troubleshooting steps to find and resolve group policy problems.