Note: This information is based off Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 RC and is subject to changes between now and RTM.
With the upcoming release of Microsoft SCCM SP1 and native support for vPro manageability, there may be a scenario where you have vPro Clients that are activated (provisioned) under Microsoft SMS with the Intel SMS Add-on / Intel SCS that you need to migrate to SCCM SP1. As may have read in the previous blog, Microsoft does not use the Intel SCS for provisioning and configuration of the vPro Clients. Instead, Microsoft as part of their SCCM SP1 implementation, have chosen to develop and integrate their own code base for provisioning and configuration management of vPro Clients. So to migrate vPro Clients from SMS / Intel SCS to SCCM, Intel will be providing a migration utility to help make this transition.
Before we get into the details of the migration utility, let us first discuss at a high level the overall SMS to SCCM migration process. The first thing to keep in mind is that the vPro client migration from SMS to SCCM SP1 is just a post step after you perform the recommend steps that Microsoft provides for upgrading your SMS environment to SCCM. Microsoft has created an excellent Configuration Manager Upgrade, Interoperability Planning and Deployment guide that walks a customer through the planning and upgrade path from SMS to SCCM. Once these steps are completed, the migration of the vPro Client from the Intel SCS to SCCM SP1 can be initiated.
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Now let us talk a little about the migration utility… At the most fundamental level, the migration utility prepares the vPro Client to be natively reprovisioned by SCCM SP1. The process can be broken into several key steps.
Extract list of vPro Clients from the Intel SCS to be migrated to SCCM (List used to track migration progress)
Generate a vPro Client list import file that can be natively used by SCCM SP1
Using the "Import Computer for Out of Band Management wizard" within SCCM SP1, import the list of vPro Clients to be provisioned by SCCM
Connect to each vPro Client to be migrated and prepare it for reprovisioning by SCCM SP1.
Once the vPro provisioning hello packet is received, SCCM SP1 will begin its native provisioning process for the vPro Client
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You may conclude that “preparing the vPro Client to migrated” is basically performing an unprovision. For the most part that is correct; however, as part of the preparation step we are setting some critical values to allow it to be reprovision without having to physically touch the client. For example, we are setting values such as Remote Configuration Certification hash used by SCCM, PID/PPS pair (used for WS-MAN Translator for firmware version that do not support Remote Config), and Provisioning Server FQDN / Port (if different then provisionserver DNS entry and 9971).
At the time you initially run the migration tool, there may be a chance that not every vPro Client will be accessible (for example mobile clients that are not on the network when you initiate the migration). The migration utility will have the ability to log and track which vPro clients have been successfully prepared for migration and which ones where unable to be contacted. Re-running the migration utility at a future dates will attempt to connect to vPro clients that were inaccessible at previous runs. If you still have vPro Clients that are being logged as inaccessible after a couple runs of the migration utility, you may be required to investigate the root cause on why those vPro Clients are not accessible.
For those that have vPro Clients deployed in your environment but not activated and you are planning on deploying SCCM SP1, Microsoft has enabled their SCCM SP1 Client agent to initiate and authorize the provisioning process through policy. This provides a fairly straight forward and easy mechanism for provisioning your non-activated vPro Clients. To take advantage of this in a no physical touch scenario, your vPro Clients will be required have a firmware version that supports remote configuration (2.2, 2.6, 3.x). If you are not able to upgrade your firmware to a version that supports remote configuration, you will be required to configure (either manually in the MEBx or USB one touch) the PSK PID/PPS pair expected by the WS-MAN translator.
In the upcoming weeks, we will post our initial beta version of the SMS/Intel SCS to SCCM Migration Utility for vPro Expert Center community review along with a deeper drive into the configuration and usage of the migration utility. Please keep tuned for more detail to come.
Matt Royer
