GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) Introduction

GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) Introduction

Remember that Microsoft designed the GPMC for Windows Server 2003 rather than W2K. Get your copy of GPMC.msi as a download from Microsoft's site. While I am assured that the GPMC will work on Windows 2000 Domains, I have not got it to run. (However, I have not tried that hard as I now prefer Server 2003.)

The GPMC unifies Group Policy management across your Active Directory forest. Before the GPMC, administrators needed multiple tools to manage Group Policy; the Microsoft Active Directory Users and Computers, the Delegation Wizard, and the ACL Editor. Not only does the GPMC integrate the existing Group Policy tools, but also it brings the following exciting new capabilities:

• A user interface that makes it easier to create and edit each Group Policy.
• New WMI filtering means that you can apply policies to particular machine, or only if there is enough disk space.
• Interfaces to Backup, restore, import, and copy Group Policy Objects (GPOs).
• Simplified management of Group Policy-related security.
• Reporting for GPO settings and Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) data.