[1]N-able Technologies [1]® has announced Policy Manager [2], a new suite of complementary tools designed to make comparing and reporting on Group Policy Object (GPO) settings dramatically easier and less time consuming.
Designed for use by MSPs and IT managers, N-able’s new Policy Manager offers an important defense against group policy inconsistencies, potential security weaknesses and other factors that can negatively impact network uptime. The solution features two powerful tools — GPO Compare and GPO Exporter — for comparing and exporting GPO settings, including comparing live GPOs to GPO backups, and exporting all GPO settings to Excel. Simplifying the management and consolidation of group policies with these tools saves time and eliminates costly configuration errors.
As an integral part of Microsoft Windows, GPOs offer management and configuration of operating systems, applications and users’ settings in an Active Directory or local environment. But for many IT professionals and MSPs, GPOs also require ongoing monitoring and maintenance — a task that is both tedious and inefficient if performed manually, according to Robert Grapes, director of product management and product marketing, N-able Technologies.
“Policy Manager makes reporting, sorting and searching on Group Policy settings significantly faster and easier, particularly when comparing settings across multiple GPOs,” says Grapes. “The software’s intuitive interface and easy-to-use sorting and searching capabilities provide not only a significant time savings for busy IT professionals, but also offers greater cost advantages compared to other offerings on the market, which are typically offered as part of a much larger, more expensive solution.”
Now available, N-able’s Policy Manager includes:
- Support for the latest policy settings from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008-R2
- Group Policy comparison capabilities to quickly identify inconsistencies
- Group Policy export features that allow administrators to choose which settings to export, and to search and sort for specific settings
- Capabilities to compare live GPOs with GPO backups to quickly find setting differences
- Selective exporting of GPO settings from one or more GPOs to a variety of formats including CSV, Excel and PDF
- Powerful keyword searching to easily find settings
- Sorting capabilities that allow MSPs and IT managers to quickly discover redundant settings
- Powerful command-line PowerShell (Microsoft’s task automation framework) interfaces for automated comparison and reporting