Group Policy Central Store - Yes or No?

[Cache]

I'm looking at whether it's going to be of benefit having a central store for Group Policy or not and wondering what others do?

 

The reason being I'm planning to move to Windows 7 over the summer for the IT rooms, but initially the admin side of things will remain on XP.

 

So, would having a central store cause me problems anywhere along the line? I remember reading somewhere about a problem with 2008, 2008 R2 and the central store but can't remember what that was. As our SIMS server runs 2008 I don't want to bugger anything up by implementing one for no benefit.

 

1 Domain Controller currently runs 2008R2 and the 2nd runs 2003.

 

Any guidance much appreciated as to whether I should head down this route or not.

 

Thanks!

[riffleman]

If you want to use Win7 or W2K8 ADMX policies, then you should use a central store. You'll only encounter issues if you apply something incorrectly. I've implemented policies via the central store for a few years and never encountered an issue.

[sted]

ive quite happily applied win7 policies on 2003 networks without a central store just using gpmc on a win7 client

[riffleman]

ive quite happily applied win7 policies on 2003 networks without a central store just using gpmc on a win7 client

 

Yes, you can do that too, but you will be restricted to using ADM based policies, which are being phased out in favour of ADMX based policies, which require a central store.

[Cache]

Yeah, we're not using a central store at the moment because there's no need but since we're pushing Windows 7 out I thought if it was going to be of use I might head down that route.

 

Might give it a go just to experiment over the summer.

[riffleman]

An advantage of the central store approach is that policies are available at any level of the ou structure. When applying ADM policies you need to import them at each level requiring them.

[AngryTechnician]

I can't think of a reason not to do it, honestly. Unless you're in a mid-to-large organisation doing lots of ADMX editing I can't think of any real problems you might encounter.

[bio]

You can use it with no problems at all. We are having a mixed environment (XP & win7 clients) and it works just fine

 

bio.