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Group Policy Processing

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chriscj21

Technical User
Mar 27, 2004
246
GB
Quick question guys...

It is quicker for 2003 Server to process one large GPO or numerous smaller ones???


Thanks in anticipation


Chris

ChrisCj21
MCSE, A+, N+
 
One large one should be quicker I think although it may depend where the smaller ones would be applied (i.e. if you applied multiple small ones but still all at the same OU level it would be a lot faster than multiple small ones all at different levels). Personally though we generally use multiple small GPOs as they kind of self-document that way and it's easier IMO to track down processing issues.
 
This error sounds like a slow link detection

As a test do the following :

Modify the default user profile to include the registry value
GroupPolicyMinTransferRate with DWORD value of "0":


Under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System",
create a value named as GroupPolicyMinTransferRate and give the value data 0.


Under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System",
create a value named as GroupPolicyMinTransferRate and give the value data 0.

Restart the client computer to take effect.
 
The time it takes to process a policy cycle is dependent on the number of policies, rather than the size. However.

The "size" of a policy depends on the number of templates you leave in.

When you create a GPO. You are spec'd with 5 default templates, system, network etc...

When that GPO is saved, all possible settings are saved, creaing an X sized policy. Whether you actually configure 1 of these settings, or every single setting. The policy will still by the same size. To decrease the size (in disk capcity sense), remove any of the admin templates that you do not need.

The speed that the policies are applied is fairly irrelevant, its done cyclically to change plain text in the registry, it isn't setting anything, and doesn't need to wait for "processing" as such. However, it detects a change in the datestamp between the existing client policy and the one on the Sysvol server, then it will need to download all the policy files, this is where it can take some time.

Policies are only "applied" once, untill they are changed again, so unless you are making changes on a daily basis, this shouldn't really be an issue either.

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant
 
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