Welcome to the ITFreeTraining video looking at how to install the configuration tool required
for Group Policy administration. Having this installed will allow you to effectively configure
and use Group Policy in your domain.
Group Policy Management is the tool that is used to configure and administer Group Policy.
Depending on which operating system you are using, the procedure for adding it may change.
In Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and above Group Policy Management is included
as a feature of the operating system. In the Server operating systems it should be present
by default, but in the client operating system Remote Server Administration Tools or RSAT
will need to be installed. Once installed, the feature will be available to be added.
In the newer operating systems the install of RSAT will make Group Policy Management
available automatically, in the older operating systems it will need to be manually added
through the control panel. In the case of a Windows Server Domain Controller,
it will automatically be added when the server is promoted, but in the case of a member server,
it will need to be added. If you are running Windows XP, RSAT is not available, so Group
Policy Management is available as a standalone add-on. All the links for the downloads for
each operating system are available in the reference section of this video.
I will now change to my computer running Windows 8.1 to look at how to install Group Policy
Management tool.
On Windows 8.1, RSAT - which contains Group Policy Management - needs to be installed.
To download this, I will open Internet Explorer and perform a google search for RSAT Windows
8.1. The first link displayed is the link that I need. If you are not able to find this
link, I have placed it in the references part of this video.
Once the page has opened, I will press the download button and then select the option
for 64bit. Next I will save the download to the desktop. Once the download has completed,
I will close Internet Explorer.
Next I will run the RSAT installer on the desktop. The install is quite a simple one,
to speed the install up, I will accept all the defaults. Once the default options have
been accepted the install will start. The install does take a few minutes to complete
so I will pause the video and return once it is done.
Now that the install has finished, I will open charms and perform a search for Server
Manager. Once found, I will open Server Manager.
To access Group Policy Management, I will open the tools menu and then select the option
“Group Policy Management”. Once it is open, I can expand down to the domain ITFreeTraining
and access any Group Policy in the domain. For example, I can select the “Default Domain
Policy”, which is created when the domain is created, right click it and select edit.
Later in the course I will go into more detail on how to edit Group Policy, but you can see
how easy it is to open an existing Group Policy and start editing it.
In the case of Windows 8.1, Group Policy Management was automatically installed with RSAT. However,
in some operating systems this may not be the case (For example: earlier client operating
systems and member servers). If this is the case, you will need to add a feature to the
operating system to enable Group Policy Management.
To demonstrate this, I will close Group Policy Management and Server Manager, right click
on the start menu and select “Control Panel”. Once control panel opens, I will select “Programs”.
Next I will select the option “Turn Windows features on or off”.
This will show the list of features that are on the system. If Group Policy Management
is not available on your system, you may need to tick this option to make it available.
When you make a server a Domain Controller this will be added automatically; however,
that is not the case when a server is added to the domain.
This concludes how to install Group Policy Management on your computer. This will come
in handy in later videos from this course on Group Policy. Until those videos, I would
like to thank you for watching.