When using Group Policy, you have a lot of flexibility to target specific computers. You can link it to a specific organizational unit (OU), add security filtering, and for Group Policy Preferences, use Item-Level Targeting. Another option to further define the computers or users that a group policy will apply to is to use WMI filters. WMI filtering can be used on the GPO or as a qualifier in the item-level targeting.
I recently had need to target the virtual servers within the organization. They are interspersed with physical boxes and needed some custom settings applied to them. To accomplish this, I could have created a group and put each virtual server within the group. That would perfectly as long as that group was accurately kept up to date. For that reason, I created a WMI filter so that the computer will do a real-time look-up at the time of group policy processing.
I created the new filter under WMI Filters for the domain inside Group Policy Management Console. The following query asks the BIOS for its manufacturer and model:
SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE (Model = 'VMware Virtual Platform') AND (Manufacturer = 'VMware, Inc.')
If ‘VMware Virtual Platform’ and ‘VMware, Inc.’ are returned, the query is evaluated as true and the group policy will be applied. Otherwise, it does not apply the policy.
You can evaluate your query to see whether you get True or False returned on various online computers by using the Group Policy Results component of the Group Policy Management Console. I tested this on a VMware virtual server and a Dell laptop and received the expected results.