GPO – PowerShell GPO management

GPO Basics:

1) Structure of a GPO:

Group Policy Container (GPC) which exists in Active Directory

and the Group Policy Template (GPT) where the actual content of your GPOs resides.

A third component, known as Client-Side Extensions (CSEs) can be found on client devices and are necessary for them to properly process the Group Policies assigned to them.

ref: http://blogs.technet.com/b/musings_of_a_technical_tam/archive/2012/02/13/understanding-the-structure-of-a-group-policy-object.aspx

2) GPO processing (LSDOU):

ref: http://blogs.technet.com/b/musings_of_a_technical_tam/archive/2012/02/15/understanding-the-structure-of-a-group-policy-object-part-2.aspx

3) GPO troubleshooting:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/22457.10-common-problems-causing-group-policy-to-not-apply.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ccba8171-2b4a-4437-ab45-bbdee8323ee2

GPO management with PowerShell:

Powershell – how to translate a GPO GUID to Name?

Get-GPO -GUID “{AD7E3746-7135-496B-A1F5-B5B11871F96F}”

Powershell – how list all GPOs?

Get-GPO -all

Get-GPo -all | ft -autosize

Get-GPO -all | out-gridview

Powershell – how many GPOs?

(get-gpo -all).count
203

Powershell – how to translate a GPO Name to GUID?

PS Z:\ADGPO management> Get-GPO -all | where {$_.id -like “bd9df1be-3663-4cb4-bb71-35f7e27c691f”} | select id,displayname | ft -autosize

Id                                   DisplayName
—                                   ———–
bd9df1be-3663-4cb4-bb71-35f7e27c691f Corporate-A-All-Settings-Restore

Powershell – create and link a GPO?

PS C:\> Get-GPStarterGPO -Name “Laptops”
Next, you can use the New-GPO cmdlet to create the new GPO from your Starter GPO as follows:

PS C:\> New-GPO -Name “France-Laptops” -StarterGpoName “Laptop”

Finally, you can link the new GPO to the targeted OU as follows:

PS C:\> New-GPLink -Name “France-Laptops” -Target “ou=computers,ou=France,dc=hq,dc=mydomain,dc=com”

Alternatively, by using the Windows PowerShell pipeline feature, you can create and link the GPO using a single command.