NREL is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC NLIT 2009 Mike Brayton June 2 nd, 2009 Group Policy Preferences

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future Group Policy Preferences What are Group Policy Preferences?  GPP are a set of client-side extensions that are managed by an updated management console.  These extensions allow the granular control of local users/groups, drive mappings, printer connections, file deployment, and many other settings without using a logon script. Where did GPP come from?  Microsoft purchased DesktopStandard Corp in 2006, including their Policymaker product.  Policymaker technology was released by MS as Group Policy Preferences with Windows Server 2008

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future Group Policy Preferences How can we use them?  Management Console Windows Server 2008 Vista SP1 + RSAT  Client requirements Client Side Extensions XMLLite No Windows 2000 support!  But we don’t have a Windows 2008 domain!

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future Group Policy Preferences Group Policy Settings Enforcement  Preferences are not enforced  User interface is not disabled  Can be refreshed or applied once  Settings are enforced  User interface is disabled  Settings are refreshed Flexibility  Easily create preference items for registry settings, files, and so on  Import individual registry settings or entire registry branches from a local or a remote computer  Adding policy settings requires application support and creating administrative templates  Cannot create policy settings to manage files, folders, and so on Local Policy  Not available in local Group Policy  Available in local Group Policy Awareness  Supports non-Group Policy-aware applications  Requires Group Policy-aware applications Storage  Original settings are overwritten  Removing the preference item does not restore the original setting  Original settings are not changed  Stored in registry Policy branches  Removing the policy setting restores the original settings Targeting and Filtering  Targeting is granular, with a user interface for each type of targeting item  Supports targeting at the individual preference item level  Filtering is based on Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and requires writing WMI queries  Supports filtering at a GPO level User Interface  Provides a familiar, easy-to-use interface for configuring most settings  Provides an alternative user interface for most policy settings Courtesy of Microsoft TechNet

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future GP Preference Types User Preferences

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future GP Preference Types User Preferences Computer Preferences

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future Extension Example: Files The Files preference extension allows you to create, replace, update, and delete files on domain PCs and servers. File paths accept both wildcards and environment variables. This feature offers great flexibility and can be used to copy configuration files, documents, or any other reasonable sized file. For example, you could copy an updated screen saver file out to all your PCs. Note from MS: Copying shortcuts using the Files preference extension is not recommended because the Shortcuts extension provides a user interface for this purpose and is more flexible.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future Extension Example: Local Groups This extension gives you the ability to configure local user accounts and groups for multiple computers.  Create, update, replace, or delete user accounts from local computers.  Change the password for a local account.  Create, update, replace, or delete groups from the local computer.  Add or remove a logged-on user to or from a local group.  Add or remove specific domain accounts to and from local groups.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future Extension Example: Common Options  Stop Processing items in this extension if an error occurs  Run in logged-on user’s security context (user policy option)  Remove this item when it is no longer applied  Apply once and do not reapply  Item-level targeting

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future Item-level Targeting

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Innovation for Our Energy Future Conclusion & Questions…