Policy Data Storage

Policy data can take several forms. Generally, it is stored in the registry, file system, or the Active Directory.

Applications designed for Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 95/98 use the registry to store policy settings. This is still the easiest way to create policy settings for your productivity applications. The Group Policy snap-in obtains registry-based policy settings from an administrative template file. This is a text file that specifies the registry-based policy that can be modified through the Group Policy snap-in. For more information, see Administrative Template File Format.

If you have an existing replicated store that meets your requirements, you can continue to use your existing store or you can move the data to the Active Directory. If the data is not more than 100K, it is best to store the data in the Active Directory. To continue using your current data store, place a pointer to your data in the Active Directory.

Note that by convention, computer-related policy settings override user-related policy settings.