Central Store for Group Policy Administrative Templates

The central store is a folder structure created in the SYSVOL directory on the domain controllers in each domain in your organization. After the central store has been created, the Group Policy tools will use the ADMX and ADML files only in the central store, ignoring the locally stored versions.

Remark: The File Replication service or DFSR replicate the central store to all domain controllers in a domain.

Before creating central store, Administrative Templates shows the following:

Figure 1: ADMX files received from the local machine

1. At Domain Controller with PDC role, log in as Domain Administrator.
2. Launch "Windows Explorer", navigate to "%Systemroot%".
3. Copy "PolicyDefinitions".
4. Navigate to "%Systemroot%\SYSVOL\sysvol\<Domain Name>\Policies".
5. Paste the folder in here.

Figure 2: Save the PolicyDefinitions in Policies folder

After creating central store, Administrative Templates shows the following:

Figure 3: ADMX files received from the central store

Before the central store is created, when you add a new group policy, you have to add it in all domain controllers, after central store is created, add the policy in the central store. After replicating , all domain controllers received the added policy.

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