You can have as many starter GPOs as you want, and each starter GPO can have a separate set of settings which can be included in any GPO at the time of its creation. However, you can add only one starter GPO to a Group Policy Object at a time.
Here is how you can create a starter GPO in Windows Server 2012 Active Directory domain controller:
- Log on to the Windows Server 2012 Active Directory domain controller with the Domain Admin for Enterprise Admin account.
- If not already started, initialize the Server Manager window by clicking its icon present at the bottom left corner of the screen in the taskbar.
- On the opened Server Manager window, click the Tools menu from the menu bar at the top right corner.
- From the displayed list, go to Group Policy Management.
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- On the opened Group Policy Management snap-in, from the left pane, expand Forest > Domains > <domain name>. (MYDOMAIN.COM for this demonstration.).
- From the expanded list, click to select the Starter GPOs container.
- After selecting, right-click the container, and from the displayed context menu, click New.
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- On the opened New Starter GPO box, specify a name and some brief description for the new starter GPO in the Name and Comment fields respectively.
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- Finally click OK to create a new starter GPO.
- In order to configure the newly created starter GPO to use it as a template for the new GPOs, right-click the newly created starter GPO.
- From the displayed context menu, go to Edit.
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- On the opened Group Policy Starter Object Editor snap-in, configure the group policies as desired and planned.
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- Once done, close the Group Policy Starter Object Editor window, and restart the computer
in order to allow the changes to take effect.
- After the starter GPO is created, every time you create a new Group Policy Object using the Group Policy Management snap-in, Windows Server 2012 would always allow you to add the created starter GPO in order to inherit all the basic level and mandatory initial configurations to the new GPO.
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