Distrbute Environment Variables via GPO

GPO can assist with pushing out the necessary Environment Variables so that users do not have to connect to the server systems manually. This also helps in future when having to move licensing between servers due to upgrades.

                1. On the domain controller, open the group policy management tool.

                2. Create a new group policy

                3. Enter a name for the new group policy. Perhaps make it something like "Red Transit Licensing"

                4.  In our example, the new GPO was named: MY-GPO. On the Group Policy Management screen, expand the folder                         named Group Policy Objects. Right-click your new Group Policy Object and select the Edit option.

                5. On the group policy editor screen, expand the Computer configuration folder and locate the Environment variables                       section. Create the new Environment variable.

                6. Select the type of environment variable. Enter a name to the environment variable. Enter a value to the environment                       variable. For the Name, you will need to use "FLEXRTC_License_File". For the Value, you will need to use your                                    "Port@HostName" or "Port@IPAddress" format to point to the license.

                7. Click ok. To save the group policy configuration, you will need to close the Group Policy editor.

                8. Next, Choose the desired Organizational Unit to recieve this Group Policy on the Group Policy management screen.                      While sending this Environment variable out to all users in your entire organization wouldn't cause any issues, it's                        recommended that you only push it out to the CAD users, or even a smaller subset of those that need the variable.                         You may need to create a new Organization Unit for this.

                  On the Group Policy management screen, right click on the Organizational Unit desired to distribute the                                       Environment variable, choose Link an Existing GPO...

                9. In our example, we are linking to the the Group Policy named MY-GPO to the root of the domain.

                10. After applying the GPO you will need to wait for 10 to 20 minutes. The GPO will be replicated during this time.

                11. To verify, on a remote computer, start a Powershell command line and verify the Environment variable was created.

                    Input:

                     Example of expected output:

Editing:

In future, to edit the variable you would go back through the created GPO Policy and edit the value of the variable and save it. That will push it out to all users.