Windows Server 2008 RC1 Debuts with Group Policy Enhancements

Published: December 12, 2007

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft made some late additions to the product once known as "Longhorn Server" last week when it announced that Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is now available for download and testing. Besides the standard tweaks and bug fixes you'd expect to see in a pre-release product, the bulk of the changes in RC1 are in Microsoft's Group Policy technology, and are aimed at making it easier for administrators to manage large networks of Windows PCs and servers.

Last week, Microsoft announced that, with the release of Windows Server 2008 RC1, it has added to the operating system a new collection of Group Policy tools called Group Policy preferences. The company also announced that some of these features will be available to Windows Server 2003.

The Group Policy preferences tools are based on the PolicyMaker Standard Edition and PolicyMaker Share Manage products that Microsoft obtained with its acquisition of DesktopStandard last year, and therefore are not necessarily new. However, because the new Group Policy functionality is being integrated directly into the operating system, this is a significant new feature for potential Windows Server 2008 users.

So, what's so neat about the new Group Policy preferences capabilities that were just added to Windows Server 2008 with RC1? Plenty, according to Microsoft.

For starters, Group Policy preferences provides a much more open way of managing user and application authorities and permissions than the standard Group Policy settings method. Preferences, for example, will work with applications and operating system components that are "non-Group Policy aware," which will open a wider swath of Windows programs to Group Policy control.

Also, instead of using a somewhat cumbersome filtering mechanism, scripts, and queries to decide how Group Policy Objects (GPOs) are enforced at the user level, as the Group Policy settings method uses, the new Group Policy preferences method uses an "item-level targeting" mechanism that can be configured from a GUI. This should also reduce the number of GPO images that need to be maintained.

However, Group Policy preferences does not provide as strict an enforcement regimen as standard settings do--users can change settings initially set by the admin using preferences--so administrators will need to consider the two approaches carefully when configuring Active Directory settings for their new servers.

Group Policy also opens up to admins two powerful areas of Windows network automation that previously were unsupported via Group Policy or required cumbersome scripts to manage: Windows settings and Control Panel settings.

In the Windows settings category, Group Policy preferences allows administrators to automatically configure several types of settings on their users' computers, including: drive maps; environmental variables; files and folders; network shares, registry settings; and shortcuts.

On the Control Panel, preferences give administrators the capability to: define ODBC connections; enable or disable hardware devices; configure folder options; define "open with" associations for file name extensions; control file name extensions; define internet settings and network options, like VPNs; codify power options and power schemes; control printers; control regional options, control scheduled tasks, modify services; and modify the Start menu options.

Microsoft also announced that users will have two ways to obtain the Group Policy preferences technology. They can get it by buying Windows Server 2008 when it goes on sale next year, or they can obtain the capabilities by buying a new product called Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT), which is designed for managing Windows Vista, and will also work with Windows Server 2003. RSAT should be available about the same time as Windows Server 2008 goes on sale, Microsoft says.

Microsoft continues to sell separately other Group Policy products obtained from DesktopStandard, including the GPOVault software, which keeps track of changes made to Group Policy Objects (GPOs) as a plug-in to the GPMC. DesktopStandard's security tools were not included with the acquisition, and are available from a spin-off company formed last year called Beyond Trust.

Windows Server 2008 will be officially launched with several other products on February 27. However, it is expected to be released to manufacturing before that time.

Interested parties can go to www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1087A498-40AD-46BA-9ADA-F32A58A94A85&displaylang=en to download a copy of Windows Server 2008 RC1.

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