Windows Server 2012 Remote Group Policy Update

We all have been there before, making a setting on a GPO and wanting to test or enforce that setting on the machine we made a change on. Before Windows Server 2012, most of us went to that machine, open the command prompt, and did a “gpupdate /force”. This was kind of annoying to have to get on each machine or wait for the refresh interval.

Now in Windows Server 2012, there is a new built-in Remote Group Policy Update feature that allows you to refresh group policy on computers that live inside of a specific organizational unit. We can simply do this by making our change to our GPO, going to the OU in the Group Policy Management Console, and right clicking on the OU and selecting “Group Policy Update”.

This triggers the gpupdate to run on the computers in the OU without having to remote into any machine. The next screen will tell you that you have chosen to run the Group Policy update on all computers in the selected OU. Clicking Yes will run the gpupdate on the machines.

That’s it, just another handy little new feature that has been added to Windows Server 2012.