Savill's FAQs: Azure Files Sync and Change Control for Group Policy

Three times a week (Monday/Wednesday/Friday), John Savill tackles your most pressing IT questions.

Read through the FAQ archives, or send him your questions via email.

Today, you can learn more about change control for group policy, and about the Azure Files Sync functionality.

Q. Can I use Azure Files Sync with any file system?

A. Although Azure Files Sync is focused on the replication from an SMB file share, the file sync agent still runs directly with the file system, and as such only supports NTFS. Any other file system is not supported.

Q. I see Azure Files Sync supports Azure Control Lists (ACLs). Does this mean the ACLs are enforced if they're accessed via Azure Files?

A. The ACL information is replicated to Azure Files, and so if the files are then replicated to another Windows-based file server, those ACLs can be enforced. However, Azure Files itself does not integrate with AD and therefore cannot enforce the ACLs.

Q. How can I change control of Group Policy?

A. Microsoft has a solution as part of its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack: Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM). This solution requires the installation of a server component, which then integrates with the Group Policy Management console. As a result, you'll have access to a number of capabilities including the check-out and check-in of group policy objects, and for each of those check-ins there is version information which also shows the differences between versions.

Although this is licensed for desktops, if all desktops in an environment are licensed, then it can also be used for servers.