Deploy Administrative Templates Central Store on Windows Server 2016

In this article, I’ll show you how to deploy the Administrative Templates Central Store on Windows Server 2016.

Get Started

Central Store was first Introduced In Windows Server 2008 R2 and changed the way Administrative Templates are used In Enterprises and SMBs.

As the name Imply, Using Central Store allows us to use a central location store all Administrative Templates and use one up to date version of templates which allows us to have some sort of version control.

Before Central Store, Administrative Templates were located on local Servers where we had the Group Policy management console Installed.

And If we had a team of admins with multiple management machines each of them had its own Administrative Templates Installed without any consistency or version control.

The Central Store Is Located on the SYSVOL Folder of the Domain and then replicated to other Domain Controllers.

Once deployed, Any Admin that fires up GP Console will connect automatically to the Central Store and use all the Available Administrative Templates.

The process to deploy a Central Store Is (as you will see below) Is to copy the PolicyDefinitions folder located on any Domain Controller In the following path C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions, and paste it to the Domain SYSVOL Folder located at \\test.local\SYSVOL\test.local\Policies\

To get started, I’ll copy the PolicyDefinitions folder from my DC

C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions

Then, I’ll paste it to my SYSVOL\test.local\policies folder located on my Domain

\\test.local\SYSVOL\test.local\Policies

Now, I have all my AT located on my SYSVOL folder

To check that the deployment had worked, I’ll open the GP Console and select a policy to edit

Once, I open the policy and click on Administrative Templates, I’ll see the message next to It the will tell me where it was retrieved from.


Posted

in

by