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Darren Mar-elia

Email dmarelia@windowsitpro.com

Darren Mar-Elia is president and CTO of <a>SDM Software</a>, a Group Policy solutions company. He has more than 30 years combined experience in IT and software development. He was senior director of product engineering at DesktopStandard (acquired by Microsoft), and he previously served as CTO for Windows management solutions at Quest Software. He was also a director of distributed systems at Charles Schwab &amp; Co. and helped guide that company's use of Microsoft Windows technologies.Darren Mar-Elia is president and CTO of SDM Software, a Group Policy solutions company. He has more than 30 years combined experience in IT and software development. He was senior director of product engineering at DesktopStandard (acquired by Microsoft), and he previously served as CTO for Windows management solutions at Quest Software. He was also a director of distributed systems at Charles Schwab &amp; Co. and helped guide that company's use of Microsoft Windows technologies. Darren has written or contributed to 12 books on Windows management topics, is a Microsoft MVP for Group Policy, and is a contributing editor for Windows IT Pro. He also created the popular GPO Guy website for information and utilities related to Group Policy.

Articles by Darren Mar-elia
Troubleshooting Group Policy 

Total Running Time: 135 min

Organizations large and small rely on Group Policy to help manage security configuration and desktop lockdown. But despite its critical role, little information is available that truly explains how Group Policy works and how you can fix it when it’s broken. This Group Policy troubleshooting series is designed to help IT administrators responsible for
Group Policy Design Best Practices
Learn to design a Group Policy deployment to improve security and optimize performance, without your users being aware of it.
What's Wrong with Group Policy?
There are five Group Policy problems that Microsoft isn’t likely to address any time soon. Here’s how you can work around them.
Managing Internet Explorer with Group Policy 1
Learn how to best leverage three Group Policy areas so that you can obtain the control you need over IE on your desktops.
Managing AD in Bulk Using PowerShell 2
Whether you're searching for Active Directory objects that meet particular criteria or modifying objects in bulk, the Active Directory module for Windows PowerShell can help you get the job done quickly and easily.
Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 Group Policy
The Group Policy improvements in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. With the possible exception of adding some PowerShell automation support for Group Policy management, this Group Policy release is rather ho-hum.
PowerShell and Active Directory
The wait for full-fledged PowerShell Active Directory support is over. Microsoft has shipped an AD module and PowerShell Drive provider to make managing AD from PowerShell a snap.
Control Application Execution with SRP
Group Policy's software restriction policy (SRP) feature gives admins a powerful tool to control what code their users can run. Learn to use hash and path rules to set up application whitelists and blacklists and maintain a more secure environment.
Security in Windows Environments: 4 Stories
This four-chapter Tech Advisor includes detailed information on various security challenges, from changing your security weakness into strengths; securing your desktops with Group Policy; comparisons of some of the top endpoint solutions on the market; best practices in security policy management, and more.
Deploying Office 2007 and Managing VPNs with Group Policy 2
Group Policy continues to be powerful—and difficult to work with. A few workarounds can help in using it to deploy Office 2007 and letting users connect to VPNs.
Securing Windows Desktops Using Group Policy 1
Check out how you can use Group Policy’s security configuration management features to protect your company’s data and systems.
Group Policy Results Screencast
View a five-minute screencast that shows how to run the Group Policy Results wizard and view the output.
Mastering RSoP 3
Discerning the effective policy settings for a given user or computer can be hard, especially in larger organizations. Resultant Set of Policies cuts through the confusion and tells you what's happening with your Group Policy settings.
Group Policy Essentials No Sys Admin Can Live Without
Ensure that Group Policy lives up to its potential—here's a primer about how GPOs are processed, how permissions and filtering work, and basic troubleshooting.
Windows Vista and Server 2008 Group Policy Enhancements
New Vista and Server 2008 Group Policy features include the client service replacing system Winlogon, using NLA to improve slow-link detection, new settings for multiple local GPOs, ADMX format for Administrative Templates, improved logging and security.
Upcoming Training

Mastering System Center 2012

During over 6 hours of training you can join John Savill from your computer as he will walk you through the key components and capabilities of System Center 2012, what’s involved in using the components, and the benefit they can bring to your environment.

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Current Issue

May 2013 - The NameTranslate object is useful when you need to translate Active Directory object names between different formats, but it's awkward to use from PowerShell. Here's a PowerShell script that eliminates the awkwardness.

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