Powershell: Controlling AMT Power States

pcgeek86@gmail.com — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:25:53 GMT

I wanted to quickly share an example of how to set the current power state of a provisioned Intel vPro system using Windows Powershell!

Take a moment, and ask yourself these quick questions:

Have you ever wanted to be able to automate the powering up, or powering off, of multiple computers?
Is your company interested in saving money by not needlessly leaving computers powered on at night?
Do you have a time-critical environment, such as a call center, where you need to reliably power up your computers so they are ready to go in the morning for agents?
Do you want to be able to create your own helpdesk tools to enable remote reset of hung systems?

If you answered "yes" to any of the previous questions, then hopefully this Powershell code will help you, as an administrator, achieve your goals! Let's take a look at how to perform the actions of:

Powering up a vPro (AMT) system
Powering down a vPro (AMT) system (not gracefully, just FYI)
Power cycling a vPro (AMT) system (also not graceful)

For the sake of simplicity, we'll continue to work with the ManageabilityStack.AmtSystem object that I have referenced in my previous article(s). If you aren't sure how to get the $Global:Amtdevice Powershell variable, please look back at my other articles. This will also require the download of the Intel AMT Developer Toolkit. You'll need the Manageability Stack.dll library contained within.

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In order to control the remote power state of an AMT system, all you really need to know are these 3 hex values:

0x10 = System reset

0x11 = Power on

0x12 = Power off

0x13 = Reset w/ power cycle

These hex values will be used with the $AmtSystem.Remote.SendRemoteControl() method to alter the power state of the remote system. The SendRemoteControl() method included with the DTK includes a number of parameters that go beyond the scope of this article, so we will pass hex value 0x0 to these parameters for the time being. In order to use the above hex values, simply pass the hex value as the first parameter of the SendRemoteControl() method. In order to fulfill the parameter requirements of this method, pass 5 additional parameters with the value 0x0. Here are some examples:

Powering up an AMT System

$Result = $AmtDevice.Remote.SendRemoteControl(0x11, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)

Write-Host "Power command resulted with: ${Result}"

Powering off an AMT System

$Result = $AmtDevice.Remote.SendRemoteControl(0x12, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)

Write-Host "Power command resulted with: ${Result}"

Power cycling an AMT System

$Result = $AmtDevice.Remote.SendRemoteControl(0x10, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)

Write-Host "Power command resulted with: ${Result}"

The above samples show how to use the SendRemoteControl() method of the AmtRemoteControl .NET type in the Intel AMT Developer Toolkit (DTK) to control the power state of a remote AMT device.

If you have any questions about this, please leave a comment or send me a private message.

Sincerely,

Trevor Sullivan

Systems Engineer

OfficeMax Corporation

Intel AMT, Windows Powershell, and You

pcgeek86@gmail.com — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:36:40 GMT

Hello everyone!

I have been working on understanding the Intel AMT Developer's Toolkit (DTK) so that I can begin developing some custom tools around Intel vPro. One of the tools that I am planning on working with is Microsoft's Windows Powershell. Windows Powershell is a very powerful, object-oriented command-line replacement for Windows XP, Vista, 2003, and 2008. It's an administrative scripting language that is significantly more powerful than VBscript, and has the entire power of the Microsoft .NET Platform behind it.

Just today, I've had my first success in using the Intel DTK with Windows Powershell, in my quest to automate Intel vPro related tasks using Powershell!

This is some really cool stuff, and I just had to get it out there to share with the community. I can't wait to see what else people build off of this!

Here is the first sample code that I've gotten to function correctly. I'm using it against a Dell Optiplex 755 running AMT firmware version 3.2.1, which was provisioned through ConfigMgr SP1.

-------------

$amtusername = "vprodemo\DomainUser"
$amtpassword = "P@SSW0Rd"
$amthostname = "vproclient.vprodemo.local"
$amtport = 16993
$amtrecallpassword = $false
$amtwebservicesonly = $false

$manageabilitystack = "C:\Program Files\Intel\Manageability Developer Tool Kit\Manageability Stack.dll"

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile("$ManageabilityStack") | Out-Null
Write-Host "Connecting to $amthostname on port $amtport"
$amtdevice = New-Object ManageabilityStack.AmtSystem $amthostname,$amtport,$amtusername,$amtpassword,$amtrecallpassword,$amtwebservicesonly
$amtdevice.UseTls = $true
$amtdevice.WsManSupport = $true
Write-Host "TLS: $($amtdevice.UseTls), WsMan Support: $($amtdevice.WsManSupport)"
$amtdevice.Connect()

while ($amtdevice.State -eq "Connecting")
{
Start-Sleep 1
}
Write-Host "AMT device is in state $($amtdevice.State.ToString())"

-------------

Unfortunately that's all I can post for now, but I definitely plan on continuing work on this development!

Trevor Sullivan

Systems Engineer

OfficeMax Corporation

Intel vPro Expert Center Blog

Powershell: Controlling AMT Power States

Intel AMT, Windows Powershell, and You