Planning Domain Group Policy Objects

Group Policy Objects (GPOs) can be used to perform many functions across a diverse or standard computer and network infrastructure built on Microsoft Windows and Active Directory. Considering how to best utilize group policies to manage any one particular environment and deciding on which GPO settings to leverage can be a lengthy process. To simplify this process and to keep from rethinking GPO usage each time, a base set of GPOs should be created and stored as starter GPOs.

A starter GPO is a new feature that is available in the Windows 2008 Group Policy Management Console. A starter GPO can contain a set of Group Policy administrative template settings that have been defined or configured to meet an organization’s security and/or configuration requirements. When a new GPO is created, a starter GPO can be leveraged to prepopulate the defined settings into the new GPO. The benefit is that each time a GPO is needed, it does not have to be created from scratch and the administrator does not need to search for each of the settings that are necessary to meet the specific object of the new GPO. The remainder of this section outlines common scenarios for GPO usage to assist administrators with the planning, deployment, and configuration of GPOs across an organization’s Active Directory infrastructure.