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Windows components and subsystems that require configuration and change management depend on the Group Policy protocols. As a result, Group Policy influences a large number of services and protocols. The most prominent examples of protocols and services that have a dependency on the Group Policy protocols are as follows:
Certificate Services: Provide a set of customizable services for issuing certificates to requestors, managing certificate lifetime and renewals, and revoking certificates. Certificates are used in software security services that utilize public key technologies, to bind the identity of a person, device, or service to an associated private key. See [MS-CERSOD] for an overview of certificate services.
Certificate services depend on the Group Policy protocols for the following:
Group Policy store: The Certificate Authority server depends on a Policy Server to store policy end point information that can be obtained through the Group Policy: Registry Extension Encoding [MS-GPREG] protocol.
Policy Server discovery: The Certificate Authority server depends on Group Policy to enable enrollment clients to discover available certificate Policy Servers. For example, clients that enroll for certificates need to be configured with end point information that specifies which Policy Server to contact and how to authenticate to it. The Certificate Services rely upon Group Policy to store and configure this information with the Administrative tool.
File Access Services: Provide a unified view of files and other resources, and includes facilities for centralized data management, file organization, and backup. It enables applications to access and share resources on a network file server, in a secure and managed environment. See [MS-FASOD] for an overview of file access services.
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The File Access Services depend on the Group Policy protocols for the configuration of individual protocol capabilities within the File Access Services. Without the Group Policy protocols, the File Access Services cannot be centrally configured and managed.
Print Services: Support communication between print clients and print servers. Print services enable print clients to submit print jobs to print queues that are managed by a print spooler component, which buffers and orders print jobs that arrive simultaneously from multiple print clients. Print Services use print drivers that are associated with the print queues to learn about printer capabilities. The Group Policy: Core Protocol [MS-GPOL] and Group Policy: Deployed Printer Connections Extension protocol [MS-GPDPC] provide support for the Print Services. See [MS-PRSOD] for more information on print services.
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The Print Services depend on the Group Policy protocols for the following:
Propagating policy settings to print clients and print servers through the Group Policy: Core Protocol [MS-GPOL] to control local spooler behavior.
Restricting print clients from accessing specified print servers.
Remotely pushing pre-configured print queue connections to print clients, so that print clients have pre-established connections to specified print queues. The Print Services use the Group Policy: Deployed Printer Connections Extension [MS-GPDPC] protocol to distribute these pre-configured print queue connections to print clients.
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS): Provide centralized update management in an enterprise computing environment. WSUS provides automated update discovery, delivery of relevant updates to computers, administrative control over update availability, and update activity monitoring. See [MS-WSUSOD] for an overview of WSUS protocols.
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WSUS depends on the Group Policy protocols for the following:
The Windows Update Agent uses Group Policy to configure policy settings for Windows Update Services: Client-Server Protocol (WUSP) clients, which includes the specification of an update server, target groups, and detection frequency, as described in [MS-WUSP] section 3.2.1.
The WSUS administrator uses Group Policy to assign and distribute settings that control the behavior of the WUSP client [MS-WUSP].
Group Policy Extensions: Group Policy is designed to be extended. Microsoft has implemented many extensions that depend on the Group Policy protocols to implement the specific configurations that the Group Policy extensions support.
Note Additional extensions to the Group Policy protocols are possible, beyond those described in this document. Implementers are free to create custom Group Policy extensions to enhance the functionality of the Group Policy protocols, as described in [MS-GPOL] section 1.8.