Deploying Software With Group Policy

By Author: Mike Jones
Total Articles: 256
Comment this article

The information in this chapter shows you how to deploy software with Group Policy, which is essential to meet the changing
CompTIA A+ Practical Application application needs of organizations. When you deploy software with Group Policy, users no longer need to look for a network share, use a CD-ROM, or install, fix, and upgrade software themselves. Best of all, deploying software with Group Policy reduces the time you must spend administering users' systems. You can also use Group Policy to redeploy, upgrade, or remove applications in the same manner in which they were deployed, which further reduces administrative time.
Learn to use Active Directory administration tools as discussed in Chapter 3,"Administering Active Directory"
Complete the practices for configuring sites and replication as discussed in Chapter 5, "Configuring Sites and Managing Replication"
Complete the practices for implementing an organizational unit (OU) staicture as discussed in Chapter 6, "Implementing an OU Structure"
Complete the practices for creating and maintaining user accounts ...
... as discussed in Chapter 7, "Administering User Accounts"
Complete the practices for creating and administering group accounts as discussed in Chapter 8, "Administering Groups"
Complete the practices for implementing Group Policy Objects (GPOs) as discussed in Chapter 10, "Implementing Group Policy"
Complete the practices for administering GPOs as discussed in Chapter 11,"Administering Group Policy"
Linda warns that some users may have huge amounts of data already stored in their My Documents A+ certificate folder on their local system. How might this affect your recommendations?
At the very least, you must ensure that there is adequate storage available on the network file servers. Furthermore, you should consider the effect on the network when the users log on for the first time when you implement this policy. The default behavior when the redirection is first implemented is for the existing contents of the local My Documents folder to be moved to the network file server. This is almost always a good idea.
If you elect not to move the contents to the new location, when users log on, their My Documents folder will appear empty. Their documents are still on their local hard drive. However, unless the user understands what has happened (and is familiar with navigating the file struc?ture to their own local profile), the files will appear lost, which might generate panic among the users. This is why moving the contents to the new location is recommended. In this case, how?ever, if many users have huge amounts of data, the simultaneous redirection of that amount of data could cause severe network congestion and/or overwhelm the file server. To address this issue, you could use Security Filtering to phase in the redirection, or on the Settings tab of the redirection policy, clear the check box to move contents to the new location. If you select the latter strategy, communication with the users is essential to avoid panic and a flood of calls to the help desk. The files could then be moved manually to the new free test questions location or to an alternate location.