Matt Royer wrote in June about some of the new AMT-related features being included in Service Pack 2 for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. I recently installed ConfigMgr SP2 in my lab environment, and wanted to follow up on Matt's post by sharing some screenshots of the new AMT features, for those of you that may not be beta testing SP2

** The updated AMT Settings screen, which now features the option to set the power package for the management controller.

** The new Provisioning Schedule screen (no more editing your sitectrl.ct0 file!)

** The new main 802.1x & Wireless Profile Configuration screen (there are a couple of detail screens below)

** The new Wireless Profile Detail screen

** The new 802.1x Profile Detail screen

I don't have a provisioned client in my lab yet, but once I do, I will see if I can investigate the updated Microsoft OOB Console, and capture some screenshots. As Matt's post stated, there should be added functionality for inputting information into the 3PDS (Third-party data store), so I assume there will at least be that change.

Cheers,

Trevor Sullivan

Systems Engineer

Hello vPro Experts!

Are you having trouble getting the Microsoft Out-of-Band (OOB) Console to connect to your Intel vPro clients? If so, one of the first things you should do, is enable verbose logging in your OOBConsole.exe.config file. This file is located in the following folder: %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Configuration Manager Console\AdminUI\bin. If you open this file in Notepad, you should see a line that looks like <source name="OOBConsole" switchValue="Error">. If you change the text Error to Verbose, you will enable verbose logging for the OOB Console. The next time you try to connect to an AMT device, you should start seeing more detailed logging in the OOBconsole.log file, located in: %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Configuration Manager Console\AdminUI\AdminUILog.

If you're seeing this message specifically: GetAMTPowerState fail with result:0x800401F3, then you might have forgotten to install WinRM 1.1 on your Windows XP client running the OOB console. Also make sure that you're running Windows XP Service Pack 3! Once you install WinRM 1.1, this error should magically disappear, and have you well on your way to managing vPro devices!

Cheers,

Trevor Sullivan

Systems Engineer

OfficeMax Corporation

I am sure you are all aware of the benefits of adopting the embedded manageability features in vPro. What has SCS got to do with that and why do we need SCS?

Can you buy a home theater, plug in the power and expect it to work with all your other media devices? Can you buy a wireless router, switch it on and expect a home network to work without configuring? No.

Similarly, in order to reap the benefits of the embedded manageability features in vPro, we need to set it up and configure it appropriately. Setup and Configuration services (SCS) provide the means to setup and configure vPro systems. Some of the abilities that SCS provides include

• - Ability to integrate with identity management systems such as Active Directory

• - Ability to request the CA for a certificate on behalf of the vPro system

• - Ability to push wireless profiles on to the vPro system for wireless manageability

• - Method to push configuration settings to a bulk of vPro systems

• - Maintenance operations such as renewal of certificates, re-provisioning systems if hostname changes

Currently SCS is integrated as part of an ISV's management console. With vPro spanning across domains such as Asset management, Remote Support, Security, Patching and Compliance, are we looking at a single management console? If we have different management consoles for different domains, how do we ensure that the vPro systems are setup and configured once and all management consoles can operate with vPro? Who provisions, who maintains, who talks to who in order to make efficient use of vPro in a multi-management console eco system? In order to allow effective inter-operability between the management consoles, are we looking at a "unified provisioning application" for all the technologies that Intel supports on a vPro system?

Let me know your thoughts...