VMware View includes a set of Group Policy templates that can be used to centrally manage settings for View desktops and servers.   These templates are required for fine tuning the behavior of a Horizon View environment and the PCoIP and Blast protocols that are used when connecting to desktops.

Brian Suhr recently wrote a great article on how to deploy the Group Policy templates on Petri. 

There is one main drawback to the Group Policy templates that are included with Horizon View – they’re ADM files.  Prior to Windows Server 2008, Group Policy templates were deployed using ADM files.  If a non-standard ADM file was used as part of a Group Policy Object, that ADM file would be included with the group policy object when it is saved onto the domain Sysvol.  This leads to Sysvol bloat and can have a negative impact on Active Directory Replication.

Microsoft addressed this issue with updates to Group Policy in Windows Server 2008.  Server 2008 allowed Administrators to create a network-based “central store” where the new Group Policy template files are stored.  These templates could then be referenced by any workstation or server that was Vista/Server 2008 or newer when authoring or editing Group Policy without having to install them.

Converting the View ADM Files to ADMX

I haven’t found many tools that convert ADM files to ADMX files.  Microsoft has released a free conversion tool, but it didn’t convert the View ADM files properly, and a number of GPO settings did not work after using this tool.

The only other ADM converter tool that I was able to find was Syspro’s ADM Template Editor.  This $60 tool can edit existing ADM templates or convert them to ADMX files.  A 30-day free trial of the ADM Template Editor is available.

The first thing that you will need to do is download, install, and register ADM Template Editor.  Once you have done this, you can start converting the ADM files.

The steps for converting ADM files to ADMX files using the ADM Template Editor are:

1.   Copy the View ADM files to the server or workstation where ADM Template Editor is installed.  On a default installation of View, the ADM files are located in C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Server\Extras\Group Policy on any Connection Server.

2.  Open ADM Template Editor.

3. To configure ADM Template editor to save new ADMX files directly into your Group Policy Central Store, go to Setup –> General Setup and enter the path to your Group Policy Central Store into the ADMX directory field. 

Note: If your Active Directory Administrator has not set up a Group Policy Central Store, please refer them to this article.

4. Go to File –> Add Existing ADM file…

5.  Select the ADM files you want to load and click Open.

5.  Go to File –> Convert ADM to ADMX

6.  Select the ADM file(s) you want to convert and click Convert.

7.  The next screen allows you to change metadata before converting the ADM file.   Make any changes as required and then click OK.

8. Go to File –> Save Files.

9. Click Save As

10. Save the files into a directory where you will be able to find them easily.

11. Open the directory where you saved the ADMX files.  Copy the ADMX files and the language folder to your Group Policy Central Store.

Note: The converted Group Policy templates will not be available at remote Active Directory sites until replication occurs.

12. When you create a new Group Policy object, the converted ADMX templates should be available under Administrative Templates.