Re: Identify group policy changes.

[Lukas Beeler <lukas.beeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 18:31, Roger Vicker, CCP <rv-tech@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I am looking at splitting users off of a Windows 2003 SBS server that I
> inherited an onto a new Windows 2008 SBS at a remote location. The prior
> administrator left no documentation.

I'm not sure if i get the scenario you're planning to do: You want to
keep the SBS 2003 and deploy a new SBS 2008 with a subset of the users
at another location?

If you want to migrate an SBS 2003 to SBS2008 you can keep the domain
- this will ensure a consistent user experience.

> server. With the multiple sets of group policy objects is there any way
> to get a list of ALL the policies that have been changed (or at least
> the ones that are not in neutral) and in which policy object? Simply I
> would like to be able to document what has been changed and where and in
> an extreme case be able to manually set a different system to exactly
> the same without using a backup or export.

Best practice is not to modify the SBS created and/or default group
policies, and move all your own changes into their own objects. Now
the old admin may not have done that, so you'll have to check.

Your best bet for comparing policies and looking at what they do would
be the group policy management console (GPMC). AFAIK, it's not
installed by default on SBS 2003, so you may have to download and
install it. On SBS 2008, it's installed by default.

Here's an example how a GPMC Report on a group policy looks like:
http://projectdream.org/~lb/office2007gpo.jpg

When migrating, you should also consider user profiles. If you create
a new domain, you will need to migrate the user profiles - there are
plenty of options there, so it really depends on your needs and the
amount of time you want to invest. If you do not do anything, a new
profile will be created for the user.