Let's summarize this chapter.
We started off by learning about how to get the PMC installed as part of the remote server administration
tools.
Remember that you can download the standalone RCA t package for either Windows seven or Windows ten
versions.
But it is a feature in any of the server SKUs.
So you could run server manager and added through the add features and rolls function.
Once you've got PMC installed, you can use it to manage multiple domains and forests as long as there's
trust in between them.
So remember that you can potentially link GPOs across domains or forests.
Although I mentioned there are some performance downsides to doing so.
Now BMC provides kind of a centric view of Active Directory, so it's really not meant to replace or
be used instead of tools like ADD users and computers.
But it is a great tool for giving you the GPO centric view.
Again, it doesn't show computer objects or user objects in AD, but it does show the old structures,
the sites that are available and containers you care about when it comes to linking and targeting GPOs.
So it's really kind of a hub for group policy management, for creation, for editing, linking, reporting
and troubleshooting.
And as far as creating and editing goes, PMC is the place you start when you need to create new GPOs
or added GPOs.
From an editing perspective, when you right click a GPO and choose edit, it launches this GP management
editor.
Or I simply call it the ED.
Focused on the domain based GPO and lets you make changes to settings.
And you can also from that editor add comments to the GPO.
So you can see sort of what kinds of things have happened on that GPO.
You can use it to annotate changes to the GPO or whatever you really want to use it for.
It's a free form text.
Then you can view that from the details tab.
Once the GPO is highlighted and just to kind of finalize that thought, remember that the GPO has a
number of tabs available to it that provide everything from those metadata around the GPO, like how
many changes have been made to it when it was last modified, what its status is to the Settings report
that lets you generate an HTML or an XML report of all the settings that are available in the GPO,
the scope tab that lets you see the targeting of the GPO.
So where it's linked, the security group filters or WMI filters that are applied to it.
So it's really kind of a complete place to go for most of your management tasks.