Group policy consolidation?

[eyetea]

Hi all,

 

Some of our PCs are taking a reasonable amount of time to boot up from cold in the mornings (sitting at Please Wait)

 

While I believe there is a reasonable amount to answer for with some of the kit getting on for 7 years, I was wondering if consolidating GPO's would help speed the process along a bit?

 

The majority of policies were created before I started here, and whilst I've created a several that were needed I haven't sorted through a lot of the existing ones (unless I've needed to edit them such as updating share locations etc).

 

Just for use as an example - our Staff science devices OU has 5 GPOs to install 5 separate pieces of software. As all of these devices require all 5 pieces of software, and the software isn't required anywhere else, would it be best practice to consolidate these into a single GPO?

 

If so, I think I would create a new GPO and recreate all the settings, apply it to a test OU/device to make sure all is still well, and go from there?

 

 

Thoughts / opinions greatly appreciated as ever,

 

J

[Firefox]

Consolidation where possible is always good practice. Although from a practical point of view I wouldn't expect to see a great jump in performance unless you were applying hundreds previously. If you suspect GPO maybe causing issues, then the eventviewer might be the best place to start, to see if any of the GPO's are "getting stuck" trying to apply. You could even see some services failing, which could be disabled, improving speed.

[penfold]

I've been doing some consolidation of our Group Policies mainly because we have had lots of old settings which are no longer applicable.

 

I've used the following to help

Security Compliance Manager

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/cc835245.aspx

 

I also used Policy Reporter to review the policies being applied on the clients

SysPro Software -> Policy Reporter

 

I've created a new GPO and am trying to reduce our massive amounts of Policies into more manageable ones. Policy reporter can help identify if group policy is the cause of the delayed start up as it will show which policies are being applied and the time it takes to do it.

[cpjitservices]

Hi all,

 

Some of our PCs are taking a reasonable amount of time to boot up from cold in the mornings (sitting at Please Wait)

 

While I believe there is a reasonable amount to answer for with some of the kit getting on for 7 years, I was wondering if consolidating GPO's would help speed the process along a bit?

 

The majority of policies were created before I started here, and whilst I've created a several that were needed I haven't sorted through a lot of the existing ones (unless I've needed to edit them such as updating share locations etc).

 

Just for use as an example - our Staff science devices OU has 5 GPOs to install 5 separate pieces of software. As all of these devices require all 5 pieces of software, and the software isn't required anywhere else, would it be best practice to consolidate these into a single GPO?

 

If so, I think I would create a new GPO and recreate all the settings, apply it to a test OU/device to make sure all is still well, and go from there?

 

 

Thoughts / opinions greatly appreciated as ever,

 

J

 

Im presuming that GPO for 5 installs has only run once and not needed again ? So shouldn't be running if the software has already been installed via GPO ? If its deploying 5 installs every time you boot up then that will take a long time.

 

You might have to get some newer machines, Maybe with SSD's ? Upgrade network links to gigabit too perhaps ?

[themightymrp]

Have you already tried enabling verbose status messages to see if there is a particular type of group policy causing the slowdown? (Printers I'm thinking). If not then enable this policy in a GPO:

 

Computer config --> Policies --> Admin templates --> System --> Display highly detailed status messages (this may appear as Verbose vs Normal status messages)

 

You should visually be able to see where a slow down may be occurring. Then use one of the machines and open Event viewer. Go to:

 

Application and service logs --> Microsoft --> Windows --> GroupPolicy --> Operational

 

See if you can find some details on which policies are taking ages to apply