Busy Saving The World - John Delizo's Tech Blog

Windows Server 2008 Manageability Feature: Group Policy Preferences: Part 3 Local Groups

Another use of Local Users and Group preference extension to enable us to add a specific domain groups or accounts to the local machine group. for this example I'm going to add all manila employees as administrators of local machines, to do this you must navigate from  the GPMC and to the Group Policy editor, editing the GPO that we need to add the preference, like what we did on my first post. Like the second post, navigate to the Computer Configuration, Preferences Control panel settings and right click Local Users and Groups, choose New - Local Group.

The whole example is posted here. Simple yet powerful extension from Group policy preferences for adding / deleting a domain OU to a local machine group.

Windows Server 2008 Manageability Features: Group Policy Preferences, Part 2 The Local Administrator

On my previous post, I had a chance to take on Group Policy Preferences with a very quick very humble description of it. On our part 2 we will demo on "How to manage local administrator accounts on machines" which has been a one of the favorite topics on the web before, even at the Microsoft Philippines Community Forum way back 2007.  Before what we do is create a script to do this and run thru GPO, now with Windows Server 2008 Group Policy Preferences, we can do it in just a few clicks.

I also chose that the local built-in administrator cannot change its password and it never expires. You can also chose to disable it if you want to. In order to assign a new password to it, fill up the Password and the Confirm password. Apply or click Okay and there, you have successfully deployed a GPO that updates Built-in Local Administrator and its passwords for all of the machines that this GPO applies to.

If you have not visited my first post, here is a link for more info on Group Policy Preferences.

Windows Server 2008 Manageability Feature: Group Policy Preferences

Group Policy Preference is a new feature to the Windows Server 2008 that enables you to configure other computer or user preferences that are not covered with Group Policy Settings. An example of which is the mapping network drives, which traditionally we use a logon script that is being executed by a Group Policy Settings. Group Policy Preference can also be described as  initial configurations and can be re-configured by the end user , while the Group Policy Settings on the other hand are strictly enforced to the target object (a user / machine).

Here is a post on a very quick overview plus a sample on how to configure a map network drive which most of the IT admins will use a combination of GPO and a batch script.

Internet Explorer 8 has been launched, ARE YOU READY? (Quick fix on IE8 Compatibility using IIS 7.0 HTTP response Headers)

If you have a website and is still not IE8 compliant you can use the IIS 7.0 HTTP response headers to make your IE7 based sites be viewed in IE 8 without any code changes

Here are we have a few screenshots and the how to do it

Installing and Managing Windows Update Service: Part 1 of 4

So what is really WSUS?

Windows Server Update Service or WSUS in a nutshell is a local cache / copy of the Windows Update Service that is in the internet. Instead of all of your machines connecting to the internet, they connect to a local WebServer (IIS) where the Update server is installed. Your WSUS server downloads the updates from Microsoft Updates then publishes it to the client machines. Because its located locally and it is built around GPO, you have full control over your PC updates, plus it saves you bandwidth.

And Oh its free! So now join me in my 4 part implementation of WSUS :D. and, if you are reading this and found something wrong, feel free to correct me, pretty please :D

Installing and Managing Windows Update Service: Part 4 of 4 : Synchronize and Manage Updates

Installing and Managing Windows Update Service: Part 3 of 4: Client configuration using GPO

Installing and Managing Windows Update Service: Part 2 of 4: Server Installation

Installing and Managing Windows Update Service: Part 1 of 4: Measure twice cut once (PLAN)

I suggest that you go over these documents before doing anything and if you found that I’m doing something wrong, please do drop me an email at johndelizo@live.com