Group Policy Replication

Just a little understanding of Group Policy Replicaton in Active Directory, or have you ever had Group Policy Management not finding any Policy settings on specific domain controllers?

Every Domain Controller has a SYSVOL folder which stores changes and replicates to other Domain Controllers, named: domain. This is regular Folder with files inside.

Every Domain Controller also has a sysvol folder underneath the System32SYSVOL folder, but this is not a regular Folder, but a Junction Point. Similar to Shortcuts, as it only points to the previously mentioned Domain folder.

When creating a new Domain Controller it doesnt allways create this Folders and Junction Point, so we need to do it manually. Otherweis the replication will not work, as it needs the folders. It will not create them folders.

I needed to know about this Junction Point, because I tried creating a regular folder and didnt understand why it wasnt replicated to this sysvol folder.

So now we know it doesnt replicate to the System32SYSVOLsysvol folder as it just show what is stored in System32SYSVOLdomain.

Source: TechNet article: Create the SYSVOL Root and Staging Areas Junction Point

Command to create a Junction Point:

mklink /J <FQDN> <New sysvol root junction path>

Example: mklink /J contoso.com D:ContosoRootSYSVOLdomain