The main (virtual) Office 2010 launch event will include a keynote speech by Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division at 11am EDT (that’s 4pm BST for readers in the UK).

System administrators everywhere will also be pleased to find that the associated Office 2010 management tools are available to download already to coincide with the launch, unlike the time lag before they were available for Office 2007, or for the later service packs. This nearly 16MB download is a self extracting exe which will force a UAC prompt on newer OS’s, which can be useful so you can put the files in a folder which needs elevated privileges, and the contents expand to a total of about 123MB.

The extracted files include Group Policy templates in ADM and ADMX formats so you can use these on XP/2003 or Windows Vista/7/2008 to create your policies. The ADMX files give you the usual advantage of a single central store versus ADM files being duplicated for every policy that uses them.

Also in the package is an updated version of the Office Customisation Tool (OCT) and opax files which contain settings for all the different apps. You will also find the now standard Excel file full (in .xls format) of GP and OCT settings for all the applications and general ones for the Office 2010 suite as a whole. You should also download and read the release notes as a Word document for these tools from the same download page, which has some late changes that supercede the spreadsheet. Some of these are fairly trivial and simply reflect changes to the explain text or the URL linked from that text.

The associated ADML and OPAL files also enable you to manage your policies across multiple languages. Included in the package at the moment are 11 language variations including English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and two Chinese variants (zh-cn for PRC and zh-tw for Taiwan. Technet says there is a Hong Kong language version included but I can’t see it).

There is more information about what you can find in the ADM/ADMX files and how to use the OCT here on Technet, and more in the deployment sections of the Resource Kit.

Author: Jeremy Moskowitz, MCSE, MCSA, MVP

Publisher: Sybex

Suggested Publisher Price: $49.99 US / $69.95 CDN / £34.99 UK

ISBN: 0-7821-4298-2 Softcover, 536 pages (+TOC / index)

Buy the book direct from the Author (and get it signed!) (Update: this link now goes to a page for the replacement fourth edition of this book)

Everything you need to know about Group Policy in one useful reference…and loads more besides

The Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) is a dramatic step forward in the way Group Policy is administered. This book provides all the instruction and insight you need to take full control of your Active Directory with GPMC and other Group Policy tools. You’ll also learn techniques for implementing Intellimirror, making it possible for users to work securely from any location; and you’ll find intensive troubleshooting advice, insider tips on keeping your network secure, and hundreds of clear examples that will help you accomplish all your administration goals.

Topics covered:

• Create and manage all Group Policy functions within Active Directory
• Understand Group Policy differences in Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003 systems
• Troubleshoot Group Policy using Support tools, Resource Kit utilities, log files, registry hacks, and third-party tools
• Create and deploy custom settings for managing client systems
• Manage, secure, and audit client and server systems
• Script complex operations, including linking, back-up, restore, permissions changes, and migrating
• Set up Local, Roaming, and Mandatory profiles
• Set up and manage Intellimirror components with Group Policy
• Use Group Policy Software Installation to perform hands-off installations
• Use Remote Installation Services to automate the installation of new Windows systems
• Ensure the safety of your users’ data with Redirected Folders and Shadow Copies

Review

Introduction

This book contains everything you ever needed to know about Group Policy and related topics, including loads of things you probably didn’t even know you should have been asking!

Jeremy Moskowitz covers in great depth the whole subject of group policy, as well as profiles (including roaming and mandatory), redirected folders, offline files, Shadow Copies, Remote Installation Services (RIS) and even finds time to take a preliminary look at scripting. I thought I already had a good grasp of most of these things, but this book still provided a wealth of little details, tips and tricks, up to date information and proper explanations of how all this really works. It was also an easy way to get up to date on many of the changes made with the introduction of XP and 2003, since these are highlighted.

Overview

When I first started reading this book I was not sure it would suit me. It is written in a very conversational, colloquial style more suited to a Tarantino script than a technical manual, and normally I find this irritating when I want precise answers from a reference work. However, I soon changed this first impression. Through this chatty style the author drew me in, got me intrigued by his passion for the subject and seemed to metaphorically drag me in and say “I just want to show you this other really cool thing you can do…”. I found I could read fluidly through huge chunks of the book and actually take in the information presented along the way as well – quite unusual for a book of this depth.

About 70% of the book is concerned solely with group policy – what policies are, how to create, apply and troubleshoot them, and some tips for more complex scenarios such as multiple-forest environments. It is a little difficult to split it in this way since topics like folder redirection depend on a policy for delivery but involve so much more than a mere setting and are dealt with in a section of their own.

I would guess that many people using group policy have probably dived right in without a thorough knowledge of many of the aspects the author deals with, such as exactly when and how policies are applied “under the hood”, what to do about updating templates (.adm files) for newer settings, and consideration of policies being applied across multiple operating systems. There is a great deal to be gained from the author’s experience here, such as sensible shortcuts to and best practice, as well as common pitfalls to avoid.

One area which does not get much coverage in older books on Windows network administration is the use of software restriction policies. In many cases this is because they were written before XP and 2003 made software restriction available through group policy (rather than older NT-style policies or using appsec.exe). This is one of those complex areas which are not just about ticking a box and everything works automagically, but requires proper attention to planning, design and testing before wholesale rollout. This book devotes a whole chapter to the topic to give it the attention it deserves, and recognises the importance for 2003 Terminal Services / Citrix environments as well as desktop administrators.

The remainder of the book deals with what at first appear to be only a loosely related collection of Windows tools for automating and controlling the user experience. A closer look reveals some deeper insights into things such as user profiles which are often skimmed over and taken for granted. It would be tempting for experienced administrators to skim these chapters on the assumption that they already know what they contain, but to do so would miss much of genuine use. I was pleasantly surprised to find many nuggets of new information as well as proper explanations of when to use these tools as well as how to configure and optimise them. Once more the author’s intimate style and obvious real-world experience came together and it is at times like being shown how to do things by a wiser colleague who can say “I’ve been here before, this is how I would approach it…”

The topics covered in the latter parts of the book include tools for automating installation – Remote Installation Services (RIS) and Group Policy Software Installation (GPSI). Again there is plenty of information here for both first-timers and old hands, and should be read particularly by anyone that has tried and given up on these powerful but troublesome subjects. Coverage is also given to features which were not available in Windows 2000 such as using advanced WMI filters on policies (particularly valuable for GPSI) and this may be enough to justify revisiting this. There is also a brief discussion of how all this fits with more complex tools such as Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS).

Style, Coverage and Detail

As I said at the start, I was impressed by how well Jeremy Moskowitz has managed to take a potentially dry subject and get across many important details in a relaxed style. This is really important in the many chapters where there is a temptation to skip over things that you “already know”. By keeping the reader engaged it is almost easier to keep reading than to miss sections out.
The author makes good use of screenshots, boxed-off text for extra notes and details and plenty of cross references to other parts of the book and web-based resources. These all help the flow, keeping the important things in the body of the text and leaving you to read the extras which you find particularly relevant. Each chapter has a useful conclusion, bringing together the areas covered, rather like a lesson summary.

The amount of information in the book is a double-edged sword – I expect I will refer back to it frequently as a reference, but I found it occasionally frustrating not being able to get straight to something I knew I had read before, and skim reading large sections was quite hard. The index could have been a little more comprehensive – sometimes you have to know what heading something is under before you can find it. It is easy to get used to being handed things on a plate by search engines these days, so maybe I am being a bit harsh, but at the risk of too much duplication it could be useful if the index were expanded a little. The front and back panels of the book go some way to help using the book as a reference when you first pick it up – one highlights which parts of the book cover different group policy topics and the other lists the areas which are new, which is ideal for people using this as a means to bring old skills up to date.

As an example of the level of detail in this book, it even discusses the subtle differences between the way XP and 2003 handle software restrictions in reality and discusses how XP sp2 may change that (the edition reviewed was published when sp2 was still in Beta; the third edition expected soon will bring this properly up to date). It is this kind of attention to little details which makes this book stand out as a really useful practical reference work for the real-world administrator, especially when it comes to troubleshooting.

When I first saw the book I thought it would be a bit like a “three-in-one” – basically separate topics lumped together with a solid group policy book for padding or publishing convenience. I was not convinced there was enough to be said about profiles, folder redirection and software installation to contribute any real benefit to my bookshelf. This partly highlights how little I thought was involved in some of these topics, but this was largely brought about by many other books giving only a surface-level treatment of such things. Too often I had read other sources which I now realise only described how things appear to work, only with the latest OS in a simple environment, and assuming everything behaves as it should. The real world is a little more complicated than that, a fact which this book easily takes in its stride.

There are a few things which the author acknowledges might be considered missing from this otherwise comprehensive book such as IPSec, PKI and EFS. Clearly there is a limit to fitting in a discussion of every possible policy, and the author does attempt to mitigate these omissions by some useful URLs for relevant MS references. Hopefully some of these might get some space in the third edition as more organisations start to adopt these built-in security features.

Overall, this book covers just about every aspect of delivering, managing and controlling the user environment across your enterprise. It is not intended to cover all aspects of systems security, nor provide a comprehensive manual for writing scripts to automate non-policy events, but it does give both of these a suitable level of attention in the wider context of the whole subject of systems management.

Target Audience

I have read many MS Press, Sybex and other publishers’ titles about Windows servers, active directory design and management and been an administrator and systems architect for several years. I was pleasantly surprised to find so much information that I had not come across before in a single book. Whether you want to consolidate your knowledge for your personal training plan, update your skills from Windows 2000, or have a real issue you are trying to resolve, this is the book for you.

Conclusion

Even if you don’t feel you or your organisation are ready for using group policy extensively (although after reading this you may not be able to resist!), the rest of the book is probably justification for adding a copy of this book to your library.

This is a sound collection of tutorials for anyone who wants to give users a better experience, tighten control of their systems, increase security and do it all without leaving their desk. Rather than being seen solely as a technical reference on a few specific topics, this possibly deserves the broader title of “Managing Windows Systems (using Group Policy and Intellimirror)”.

I would say without hesitation that “Group Policy, Profiles, and Intellimirror” is an essential handbook for any administrator wanting to improve their systems for their users, the business and themselves. This book receives a hard-earned rating of 10/10, and I look forward to the third edition with great anticipation.

This review is © Copyright Adam Vero 2005 and was first published on Security-Forums Dot Com.
It may not be reproduced in any form in any media without the express permission of the author, or Security-Forums Dot Com.

There were various articles announcing Vista sp1, including one on the official Vista team blog which managed to say lots about all the good stuff and conveniently forget some things like the removal of the very useful GPMC, which is only mentioned in the whitepaper (and later reported on by various bloggers and journalists of varying degrees of credibility).

I have to admit that reading whitepapers can sound pretty dull, particularly when they relate to something I can’t download yet. I tend to think “I’ll read it nearer the time, once I have actually downloaded <whatever> and can apply what I am reading”. On this basis it is easy for people to overlook this announcement amid the other marketing hype.

In my mind there are two key questions here:
Firstly, I know there is supposed to be a new enhanced version of GPMC available at some point, but will it be available in time for the Beta testers? Or even for the final release of sp1? This remains unanswered at the moment, and is crucial. If it is available, it lessens the impact considerably.

Secondly, why take a retrograde step to remove something which is already in there? This second question is the one which most other commentators have addressed.

Jeremy Moskowitz, MVP for Group Policy makes some valid points on a post entitled “Vista + SP1 = Gbye GPMC” in his blog (sorry but I can’t find a way to link to the specific post):

Today, the GPMC is part of Vista. That’s great. One less thing to load.
But what’s also (now) true is that if you install SP1 for Vista (not yet available) the GPMC will be uninstalled. Why?

Because this allows for something that I’ve personally advocated for. That is, when new goodies are ready to be launched in Group Policy land, let’s GET IT OUT THE DOOR. And it used to be this way. The GPMC was a simple download and simple install. When bugs were found in the GPMC, that meant it was a quick fix to jam the fixes in, and re-upload the file for the masses.

But now (today) the GPMC is part of the Longhorn and Vista operating systems. Is this good? Not really, in this one dude’s opinion. Because what if some new whiz bang feature is suddenly available? Then you’ll have to wait until MAYBE an operating system service pack, or at worst a full operating system revision until it’s updated.

Darren Mar-Elia (another GP MVP) wrote a very extensive post about the Vista sp1 release, specifically pointing out lots of errors in one of the many articles about sp1. In it he takes up the same idea as Jeremy:

Back when GPMC first shipped, out-of-band of the OS, I’m sure Microsoft heard complaints that it should be in the OS, since it became such a crucial part of managing GP for many shops. So, they went and did the most logical thing – they put it in the box in Vista.

But to do that resulted in GPMC having to become part of the behemoth that is the Operating System release cycle at MS. This has obvious limitations if you know how glacially things move within MS when it comes to OS revs. Once inside the OS, they could no longer rev the GPMC and make enhancements to it on their own schedule.

However, I can’t see that the GPMC is so tightly integrated to the operating system as to prevent an update independently of the service pack cycle. The GP processing engine, sure (although making that its own process in Vista outside of winlogon should help with any patches that are needed). But the GPMC is an application. It does nothing until invoked by the user. I realise that it can still use shared code, but does it, in fact?

Anyway, if the GPMC so woven into the fabric of the OS that it can’t be independently tested and upgraded, how are they managing to take it out so easily? Surely that is contradictory?

Other OS components installed by default have upgrades made available periodically, the most obvious being Internet Explorer and Media Player. MS have claimed for a long time that both of these are fundamental components of the OS and it would not be possible to ship Windows without them unless it was severely crippled. This has been the basis of its defence in previous anti-competitive practices (antitrust) lawsuits. Microsoft just spent three years appealing a decision by the EU courts that ruled they had to produce a version of Windows XP without Media Player (which they have subsequently done for both XP and Vista)

Darren goes on to say:

But, with GPMC installed on every desktop, any joe user with normal non-administrative rights in the domain can open GPMC and view the settings on any GPO they have read access to! Further, they can also backup all GPOs that they have read permissions on, to, say, their USB keys

Technically true, and echoed by others. However, this overlooks the fact that to run GPMC on Vista in a default configuration the user requires local admin rights on their domain account (the local admin account won’t be able to access the domain policies, only the local ones). So yes, if you have domain users with local admin rights on their machines, they could run GPMC as described and take a copy of your policies. I’ll ignore for a moment the lack of security inherent with that model (because I accept there may be users who have a second account for doing admin things occasionally via a runas or UAC).
My question is this: surely a user sophisticated and malicious enough to do what Darren suggests would also be able to take the trivial step of installing GPMC if it was not already on their machine?

If they don’t have local admin rights they could still take a copy of the files for the policies they have read access to by going directly into the sysvol share. This would then take more effort to interpret than a GPMC report but they could easily restore them into another domain (in a virtual machine, say) in the same way you would have done before GPMC.

As a counter to this, surely we should be advising people to take more care in the creation of their Group Policies? It is very easy to ignore the security filtering for most purposes if you have designed your AD to enable you to target your policy links exactly where you need them. However, it may be prudent to remove “authenticated users” from the security filter (or via the delegation tab) and add back in only those groups who actually need to receive each policy.

You could start by having a security group for all computer accounts and another for users if you are following recommended practice of keeping the two types of settings separated and only enabling one ‘half’ of the policy. This would immediately secure your computer policies against the sort of access that we are concerned with here, including via sysvol. More granular groups would be ideal, but would increase the overhead of managing things.

So, I remain to be convinced that having GPMC pre-installed actually makes anything less secure than it already is. I am also unconvinced that it needs to be removed in order for independent updates to take place, as that would imply it was very tightly integrated in the OS, which would imply it could be quite hard to take out of the codebase, which seems to me a little contradictory.

I’ll just have to live without it, or install the enhanced version as long as it is available soon enough. It just still seems illogical.

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David Overton posted an article about what’s coming in the first service pack for Vista. In it he links to and quotes this BetaNews article which says:

the service pack will uninstall the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) and GPEdit.msc will edit local Group Policy by default

So where did they get this important bit of information? It’s not in the Vista Team blog announcement, nor the extensive interview with Jon DeVaan, senior vice president of the Windows Core Operating System division at Microsoft.

It is in fact buried in the middle of the White Paper about the Vista sp1 Beta release, a document you may not have bothered to read in detail unless you are one of the lucky(?) 10,000 who will get to test this out. The relevant paragraph, in full, reads:

In addition to these changes, Windows Vista SP1 will change the tools that customers use to manage Group Policy. Administrators requested features in Group Policy that simplify policy management. To do this, the service pack will uninstall the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) and GPEdit.msc will edit local Group Policy by default. In the SP1 timeframe, administrators can download an out-of-band release that will give them the ability to add comments to Group Policy Objects (GPOs) or individual settings and search for specific settings.

Now, I’m a bit of a zealot for good systems management (one of the original drivers for me writing this blog, and the idea for the name). I would also say I am an evangelist for Group Policy – particularly as one of the site admins for GPAnswers.com where there is a thriving community helping out people in difficulty over the intricacies of the subject.

I have heard lots of people say that adding GPMC into Vista “out of the box” was a good thing, and a few grumbling that there is no new version for XP/2003 yet, nor a downloadable version in case you break the built-in one (although that should be repairable in any case.

However, I have yet to hear of anyone saying they wish it was not there, and that it is too complex or gives too much power to someone. If you are one of these people, please let me know why you feel this way by leaving a comment. I hope to convince you of your error (told you I was an evangelist!)

The possible saving graces for me are these improved features which are discussed in the same white paper:

• BitLocker Drive Encryption encrypts extra local volumes. For example, instead of encrypting only drive C, customers can also encrypt drive D, E, and so on.
• Administrators can control the volumes on which to run Disk Defragmenter.

Both of these will be useful to me. I hope they make it through the Beta to the released version.

Spread the word :

The Microsoft Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer (GPDBPA) for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is designed to help you identify Group Policy configuration errors or other dependency failures that may prevent settings or features from functioning as expected.

The page also refers to KB 940122, but this does not seem to exist at the time of writing – either this is an error or the KB has not yet been published.

<edit: In the last two hours this article has now been published. An extract from the introduction:

For example, you can use this tool to analyze a Group Policy configuration for the following purposes:

• To search for common configuration errors

• To discover and to diagnose problems

• To collect data for archiving

/edit>

Download links below:

GPDBPA XP 32 bit (requires WGA validation)

GPDBPA XP 64 bit

GPDBPA 2003 32 bit (same as link at top of this page)

GPDBPA 2003 64 bit