Activation Blog

Upgrading Intel® AMT SCS from version 3.3 to version 5.x?

liesa.harkness@hp.com — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:47:26 GMT

If you are gettng ready to upgrade your Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT) Setup and Configuration Service (Intel SCS or SCS) from version 3.x to 5.x. check out my Intel® AMT SCS V3.3 TO 5.X Upgrade Overview

It covers a couple of items that differ between the versions, especially around locations of your Remote Configuration provisioning certificate.

Customer Preparation Checklist for Pro Activation with SCCM

gnszolnx@msn.com — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:26:50 GMT

Do you need guidance for infrastructure preparation for Pro platforms?

The following checklist is for customer infrastructure preparation to ensure you can implement Pro platforms within the customer's corporate production environment.

Infrastructure Prep Checklist for Microsoft SCCM

White Papers

gnszolnx@msn.com — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:46:05 GMT

Check out these How To White Papers

As you determine how you are going to deploy vPro, why not learn from others who have been in similar circumstances. Browse through the many white papers on a variety of certificate, configuration, wireless, and repair topics.

You can access all of them at White papers.

Case Studies

gnszolnx@msn.com — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:28:06 GMT

Learn how Intel has helped top companies, universities, and hospitals shorten the time it takes to do IT, including the following:

Complete an Asset Inventory
Solve Hardware Problems
Solve Software Problems
Protect all PC's by detecting antivirus agents

In many cases Intel has shortened the time it takes to complete these tasks by 25 to 50 percent, saving money, while also developing a more efficient workflow.

Enterprise Client/Mobility Success Stories

Looking for all you need to know about certifications? Checkout everything related to vPro and certifications.

gnszolnx@msn.com — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:41:20 GMT

Need information on vPro and certificates? Check out this new wiki.

Go to http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-2225.

Time to get activating - but wait.. is it Secure?

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:46:54 GMT

I was recently asked about the security of vPro and Intel Active Management Technology, therefore I started to pull together all the resources I leverage when discussing this topic and help to alleviate concerns of the Information Security folks in the IT shops. here are those links and if you find additional ones that help please add on to the blog.

Hardening Measures Built into Intel® Active Management Technology

http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/3703.htm

AMT System Defense Usecases

http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-1278

Intel® Active Management Technology Protect Use Cases

http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/1031.htm

Intel® Active Management Technology Use Case #7: Hardware-Based Isolation and Recovery (Protect)

http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/1179.htm

If any questions on security of vPro please let me know.

Underscore is not supported in Intel AMT Hostnames

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 02:45:26 GMT

If you are seeing any failures in your log around setting the hostname during a Remote configuration it could be due to a underscore in the host name. Check out Terry Cutlers post on altiris juice @ http://juice.altiris.com/tech-tip/1622/underscore-not-supported-in-intel-amt-hostnames . Terry references the RFC952 - DoD Internet host table specification @ http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc952.html. Here are the assumptions from that specification.

ASSUMPTIONS

1. A "name" (Net, Host, Gateway, or Domain name) is a text string up

to 24 characters drawn from the alphabet (A-Z), digits (0-9), minus

sign , and period (.). Note that periods are only allowed when

they serve to delimit components of "domain style names". (See

RFC-921, "Domain Name System Implementation Schedule", for

background). No blank or space characters are permitted as part of a

name. No distinction is made between upper and lower case. The first

character must be an alpha character. The last character must not be

a minus sign or period. A host which serves as a GATEWAY should have

"-GATEWAY" or "-GW" as part of its name. Hosts which do not serve as

Internet gateways should not use "-GATEWAY" and "-GW" as part of

their names. A host which is a TAC should have "-TAC" as the last

part of its host name, if it is a DoD host. Single character names

or nicknames are not allowed.

BIOS & AMT Settings - Quick Primer on AMT location in the BIOS

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:58:25 GMT

Nick & I got together this week and evaluated a few platforms for their AMT settings in the BIOS. In this video, Nick explains how to get into each BIOS and where the options for AMT are ( or for that case where they are NOT ).

Here are a few screen shots of two of the platforms. We are also going to publish out a matrix of the systems with drivers, bios settings that Frank has been working on.. stay tuned for the link.

Intel® AMT Reflector - New Release Posted w/Video Tutorial Too!

timothy.c.duncan@intel.com — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:56:27 GMT

Intel® AMT Reflector is a software tool designed to allow local management of Intel® AMT Mangement Engine functionality from the local operating system. Removing the need to reboot to verify and change the Intel® AMT host computer name or un-provision Intel® AMT on the computer. This functionality improves debug and factory operations in activating and building Intel® AMT based client environments. This release completes DOPD SW Engineering's original functionality plan for the tool and is therefore marked as a production level release.

This release has the following updates from the Beta release:

· Added a timestamp to Intel® AMT events in the logs generated by the client-side applications.

· Fixed the XML logfile format so that it will be properly recognized by external applications that support the XML file format.

· Fixed the issue where some commands may not succeed on the first call for some Intel(R) AMT systems.

· Fixed the "Browse" button functionality in the Intel(R) AMT Reflector Server configuration window.

· The Intel® AMT Reflector Server now logs the client FQDN for each event.

· Removed the View Log window from the Intel® AMT Reflector Client application.

· Improved the error handling of the Intel® AMT Reflector Client application.

Download the tool here

Here's a 5 minute video overview of the tool's capabilities (Click here to view video on YouTube) :

How to put the AMT version into the Registry

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:52:23 GMT

I witnessed our Internal IT guys defining a BKM that I thougth was very relevant to share out to the community, therefore let me explain.

Challenge: How can you use a mgmt console to read the AMT version so you can write a report in your mgmt console?

Output: You need to have a value placed into the registry that has data whether it's all of the BIOS, MEBx, SOL, HECI, etc.. driver versions, then you can read this data into a mgmt report.

Solution: run MEInfowin.exe and redirect the output to a text file using the “>” operator

Example --

Then you need the write a program in your favorite language such as VB script or C# to read through that text file and write the desired into to the registry.

Then use your mgmt console to read these values & report out. The internal IT guys are doing this to check versions.

Thanks Intel IT folks for the BKM.

Patching After Hours with vPro - Altiris Console

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:18:00 GMT

In my last blog I mentioned a group of us got together to showcase the technology in the Intel Labs. This video Frank, which will be at ManageFusion & myself showcased the Patching use case of how you can wake a system up, patch & then return to powered off state. The value is in the effectiveness of powering the machine, patching and then shutting it down as quickly as it started.

The same note here, if you are interested in how we specifically wrote the job please let us know and we can add that detail out here as well. I also have a detailed screen by screen view if of interest.

USB Key Provisioning Utility - One-Touch Provisioning Tool - Binary & Source Now Available.

timothy.c.duncan@intel.com — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:28:01 GMT

The USB Key Provisioning Utility (UKPU) tool is designed to create a valid USB key for provisioning Intel® AMT Systems. The UKPU tool prepares a USB Flash drive, copies the requested setup.bin to the drive, and also verifies that the setup.bin is saved using the proper procedures necessary to ensure that it is detected by Intel® AMT.

The tool has a 'repair' mode that allows you to take an existing USB Key and reconstruct it to ensure the setup.bin is visible to Intel® AMT. In addition, you can set up a USB Key using any renamed setup.bin file on your computer, and the tool will automatically ensure it is renamed to 'setup.bin' when setting up the key.

Here's a 3 minute video overview of the tool's capabilities (Click here to view video on YouTube):

Both binary only & open source licensed source versions available at the download site.

DOPD SW Engineering Team

Two New Tools Aim To Ease Activation

timothy.c.duncan@intel.com — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:07:04 GMT

Today we offer the USB Key Provisioning Utility (UKPU) focused on one-touch provisioning and the Intel® AMT Reflector which offers a unique implimentation allowing an Intel® AMT client to access/manage some Intel® AMT functionality locally via the OS without entering the management engine directly (usually via BIOS).

Click here to learn more about Intel® AMT Reflector or here to download directly.

Click here to learn more about USB Key Provisioning Utility (UKPU) or here to download it directly.

Tell us what you think!

DOPD SW Engineering Team