Group Policy templates and containers

Group Policy templates and containers

A GPO has a template and a container

A GPO is made up of two components a Group Policy Template and a Group Policy Container. These components work together to define the GPO and keep it updated.

	Description	Location
Group Policy Template	Contains Group Policy settings	Stored in shared SYSVOL folder
Group Policy Container	Stores version information	Stored in AD DS directory

Group Policy Templates are the settings

Group Policy templates are the actual collection of settings that you can modify. The Group Policy template includes files that are stored in the SYSVOL of each domain controller. SYSVOL is in the %SystemRoot% \SYSVOL\Domain\Policies\GPOGUID path, where GPOGUID is the globally unique identifier (GUID) of the Group Policy container. When you create a GPO, a new Group Policy template is created in the SYSVOL folder.

Group Policy Containers are the objects

The Group Policy container is an Active Directory object that is stored in the Active Directory database. Each Group Policy container includes a GUID attribute that identifies the object uniquely within AD DS. The Group Policy container defines basic attributes of the GPO, such as links and version numbers, but it does not contain any of the settings. When you create a GPO, a new Group Policy container is created in AD DS.