Windows® Group Policy Resource Kit: Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Vista®

Chapter 4. Architecture of Group Policy

In this chapter:
Group Policy Dependencies
New Group Policy Service
Domain Controller Selection During GPO Management
Architectural Parts of a GPO
GPO Replication
Client-Side Extensions
Summary
Additional Resources

Like most technology, Group Policy is very logical and predictable. The structure of Group Policy has not changed much over the years, although some of the internal mechanisms have. Because Group Policy is such a stable and reliable technology, there has been no need for major changes.

With that said, there have been some radical changes to the underlying implementation of Group Policy with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Although the core dependencies have not changed, the core engine ...