Systems Management

I've discussed this issue with Microsoft in the past. There is no "official" answer, but what I was told is that they are indeed installed in the order they are added to the GPO. If you really need to control the order in which items are installed, I would recommend creating multiple Group Policy Objects- at this level you can specify order- just not within a GPO.

I agree with Bob, although there are numerous ways to do this. If you have less than 500 computer and user accounts you can use a tool included in the Windows 2000 resource kit. It is called FAZAM (limited functionality version). This will allow you to manage your GPOs in the event that you need to create new ones for each app. At work we use the full version of this app, it has full reporting and version control built in, it is great. We use 1 GPO for each app and it simplifies the process of ordering the installs. Once you have 1 GPO for each app then you can change the order via AD Users and Computers by taking the property of the OU and clicking the Group Policy tab. Another nice way of manging the GPOs if you do not want to go the route of FAZAM is to install the Group Policy Management console, but you will require a Windows XP computer to do the GP management from as it is only supported on that platform.

Good Luck.

thanks guys.
As I´ve studied so far, gpo application order is determined by nesting.
If I use a different gpo for each app, will i control the order of deployment by NESTING the gpo´s, or is there another way?

thanks for the help, ill pay attention when the comp boots to see if apps are actualy deployed in the order in which I´ve added them to the gpo.

You can determine the order without nesting the Group Policies.

In the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC), if you click on an Organisational Unit, the right-hand pane will display a number of tabs. The first tab is "Linked Group Policy Objects". That will list all the group policies that are linked to that OU at that level. You can change the order with the up-and-down arrow. The next tab, Group Policy Inheritence, will list all the group policies that will install on that workstation and order (based on the order set in that OU and parent OUs).

I certainly recommend using a seperate GPO for every application. We used to use a system of having all the main apps in a "Core Apps" group policy, but this ended up being a pain to untangle as we upgraded applications, people wanted their own setups, etc.

Another option as well is FAZAM (if you have less than 500 users/computers), it will allow you to use RSOP (resultant Set of Policies) to determine the order that the GPOs are applied. This is also available with Grou Policy Management Console in Windows XP and above, but FAZAM gives that ability to Windows 2000.

FAZAM can be found in the Windows 2000 Rersource Kit, it is a limited release for small to medium networks.

Dont create a GPO for every app or you will see slowdowns in many areas......especially on logins and shutdowns. The fewer GPO's you use the better they apply.

Of course this depends on how big the organisation is.

Apps deployed via GPO will deploy in alphabetic order if you create the GPO in that order. If you add the apps any other way.....it will deploy them in trhe order they are created within the GPO.

So if you have 3 apps and they need to go down as app1 app2 app3 then make them alphabetic in name order and add them to the GPO in that order. It works fine for me.

Jim, I have found that my OUs that have 15-20 GPOs applied to them have no diminished performance on any of the computer or user accounts within them as compared to OUs that do not. We currently have 800 Workstations in our AD structure and about 1500 users accross 4 domains in 1 forest. Our GPO structure is very reliable and effective.

Fair enough....I should have qualified that I'm working on a site with 30,000 users spread across Australia ....which is about the size of the continental USA. Some of them are slow links and hence the caution :)