Sadly, for most people, RIS will be a matter of saying, 'Yes I understand
what the settings are for, but actually, I do not need them'. Sad,
because RIS is one of THE great services, however since Ghost is so well
established administrators are unwilling to believe there is a better
solution. More about
RIS.
If you are using RIS, then I would recommend enabling 'Automatic
Restart', it's helpful if the service fails for RIS to try again. The only
other setting I would change is disabling the 'Custom Setup', you do not
want users fiddling with your installation.
Group Policy Drive Maps
The modern group policy method of drive mapping does not require any
knowledge of either VBScript or PowerShell. In Windows Server 2008 you can launch the
GPMC and configure Drive Maps in the Preferences section.
See more on Group
Policy Drive Maps.
This icon is not what it seems. The main security settings are not configured
here but from the Computer
Configuration. Moreover, settings such as password length are set at the Domain level, not at the OUs.
The security settings here are merely a shell for consistency, there is
little if anything to be gained by setting policies here. If you need
account policies settings such as passwords, then go to the Default Domain
policy, Computer Configuration. That means navigating away from the
test OU.
When I research these seemingly useless settings, I discovered they are
used in one specialist scenario, when users authenticate locally in the SAM
database, rather than logging on to the domain. In other words, if
users select the machine name rather than the domain name in the logon box,
then these settings bite.
One possible use for these settings is SQL Member servers.
Guy
Recommends: Permissions Analyzer - Free Active Directory Tool
I like the
Permissions Monitor because it enables me to see quickly WHO has permissions
to do WHAT. When you launch this tool it analyzes a users effective NTFS
permissions for a specific file or folder, takes into account network share
access, then displays the results in a nifty desktop dashboard!
Think of all the frustration that this free utility saves when you are
troubleshooting authorization problems for users access to a resource.
Give this permissions monitor a try - it's free!
Guy Recommends:
SolarWinds' NPM - Network Performance Monitor
SolarWinds' performance monitor is designed for detecting network outages,
making it easy to see what's working, and what needs your attention.
This utility guides you through creating network maps; it also helps
identifying whether the
root cause is faulty equipment, or resource overload. Give NPM a try.
