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2003 Active Directory Group Policies - post upgrade to 2008R2

I have done this for customers in the past but I am trying to recall what occurs.
End user? As I remember they will get the same group policy, correct?
Admins? editing GPOs created in 2003 - now living in 2008R2 AD. What has changed? What won't be able to be changed after eliminating all 2003 Domain Controllers?
Central Store or ?
Any decent links for this process?
Thanks!

Henrik Johansson

If GPOs are applied depends on the clients (read explanation of specific GPO setting) and isn't related to version of DCs. You edit GPOs like before by using GPMC.

The new thing about GO is the Central Store which stores policy definitions in ADMX and language definitions ADML files in a central location instead of having them on every client computer used for management or policy evalutation (RSOP). This saves space as the policy files don't need to be kept in each GPO like old ADM files needed. Central Store is used by Vista/2008 and newer clients.
See KB https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929841 about setting up Central Store.

When decommision last old DC, you can raise DFL/FFL to newer version to get advantage of newer AD features like AD Recyclbe Bin and convert SYSVOL replication to use DFSR instead of old FRS.
When raising DFL/FFL, you will not be able to have older DCs than the functional level.

K B

ASKER

Thank you for the reply.

I remember when moving from 2000 DCs to 2008R2, certain settings - we could not edit. Is it the same from 2003 to 2008 R2? I believe certain items moved from policies to preferences.

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Henrik Johansson

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K B

ASKER

So are you saying there will be no change to end users? There will be no change to the admins creating or editing GPOs?

K B

ASKER

Henrik,
Thank you for your extensive replies. I was wondering if you had a comment regarding my last question in this thread. If you feel it is out of scope I could open a new question.
Thanks again.
K.B.