Domain group policy

To deploy and manage Domain Group Policy, administrators use GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) and the Group Policy Object Editor in Windows Server 2003 and 2008.

Domain Group Policy Management Console

The GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) integrates the Group Policy functionality provided by the following tools into a single console:

• AD Computers and Users
• AD Services and Sites
• Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) MMC (Microsoft Management Console) snap-in
• Access Control Lists (ACL) Editor
• Delegation Wizard

Doamin Group Policy Object Editor

The GPO Editor or Group Policy Group Editor (previously known as GPEdit) is used to manage and configure your policy settings. Admins can edit the policy settings via the GPO Editor, which uses extension snap-ins to provide functionality. GPOs are policy settings created by the Group Policy Object Editor. These policies do not take effect until the system applies them.

Doamin Group Policy Results and Modeling

The GPMC can integrate the logging and planning capabilities provided by the Resultant Set of Policy service with two options:

• Group Policy Results - this option will display the RSoP that was applied to a given computer or user, and it works by communicating directly with the target machine to retrieve the RSoP data. In the GPMC, RSoP logging data can be read by admins for objects in a domain unit. Differnet RSoP queries for each computer/user combination are represented by individual nodes.
• Group Policy Modeling - this option will display policy deployment simulations for any computer or user in a domain. By calling a service that runs on a Windows Server domain controller, the GPMC provides access to simulated RSoP data. An individual node in the GPMC represents each Group Policy Modeling simulation.

source: microsoft.com