Group Policy Basics – Part 2: Understanding Which GPOs to Apply
How Does a Client Know Which GPOs to Apply? There are two types of GPOs. There are GPOs that are configured locally on the client machine and are always processed, and there are GPOs linked within the Active Directory structure itself. While the client knows that is needs to process its local GPO, it's not as clear which GPOs in the directory structure apply to it. Within the directory, GPOs can be linked to the following levels: Site Domain Organizational Unit Depending on where the client object is located determines which GPOs it applies. For example, consider the following scenario: Here we see that the workstation named Windows 7 is within the Workstations OU that is part of the W2K8Forest.com domain. Though we don't see it on this screenshot, the Windows 7 client also belongs to the Active Directory site known as 'Default-First-Site-Name'. Given this, which GPOs need to be considered by our client mach...