If you are using Out Of Band (OOB) Management in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 SP1 (or greater) to manage your Intel vPro clients, you may have noticed that computer objects are created in your Active Directory domain during provisioning of the Intel vPro firmware. These computer objects are created by the amtproxymgr component of an OOB Service Point, and allow Intel vPro to communicate directory with Active Directory, regardless of the operating system state.

Since these vPro computer objects appear very similar to standard computer objects that are created when joining a Windows OS to an AD domain, it may be hard to distinguish which ones are vPro accounts, and which ones aren't. This situation can be worsened if you somehow have Windows computer accounts mixed into the same OU that contains your AMT objects.

As you'll see below, it's very easy to locate these computers using some simple PowerShell code:

$vprosearcher = [adsisearcher]"(&(objectclass=computer)(serviceprincipalname=*:16993*)(samaccounttype=805306368))"
$vproaccounts = $vprosearcher.FindAll()

These two lines of code simply create a System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher instance, with some LDAP search criteria to identify the accounts, and then assigns the results of this search to a PowerShell variable called $vproaccounts. The default search root is the top-level of your Active Directory domain, and the default search scope is already set to SubTree, so you don't have to specifically configure these settings on the DirectorySearcher. Once you're at this point, you can simply enumerate the accounts, or pipe the results into a PowerShell ForEach loop, and perform some operation against them (for example, givem them a Description attribute value).

Because this code sample uses the "adsisearcher" type accelerator (aka. type shortcut), it will only work with PowerShell v2.0 (included as part of the Windows Management Framework), unless you modify PowerShell v1.0 to include it. There's almost no reason not to be using PowerShell 2.0, now that it has been officially released, however.

I recommend using the free Quest PowerGUI tool to develop and debug PowerShell scripts.

Cheers,

Trevor Sullivan

I've heard a number of interesting ideas around Basic System Defense usage.  Basic System Defense is the feature that allows you to define up to 32 inbound and 32 outbound ports of allowed traffic.

As a teaser to the article series, see the following diagram and brief explanation:

• Target Client Computer - Unbeknownst to the user, the system has an outdated security solution and has been infected by a virus\worm. The user is experiencing delayed performance and unexplained events which prompt a call to the IT Support Helpdesk.
• IT Support Technician - Receives support request to address the user's system troubles. Early diagnosis reveals the system has been infected. The user's system must be isolated from the network, meaning that communications in or out of the client must be restricted and remediated. The support technician will be using a Microsoft remote desktop to interact with the remote client computer, and will need to install files from a network share. (A similar concept would apply for PC Anywhere… yet to demonstrate the capability, I purposely chose this setup. Please keep reading)
• Altiris Notification Server - The technician accesses the Altiris Console to invoke a Network Filter. However, the default network filter limits traffic to a very limited set of functions between the Notification Server and a target Intel® vPro™ technology system. If the standard Network Filter is used, Microsoft remote desktop and file transfer will be restricted. Therefore, a customized network filter is required, which is provided via the Altiris Enterprise Network Filter (ENF) Utility. The customized filter will allow Microsoft remote desktop ONLY between the IT Support Technician PC and the Target Client Computer. (NOTE: The ENF is a free add-on for Altiris v6 environments, and included in Altiris v7 environments.

Interested to read more on this, obtain sample configuration files, and understand how additional usages can be accomplished?

Take a look at the following series - I've included the individual links, but each article also includes the pre\post links within the series:

• Part 1 - http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/part-1-using-network-filtering-enhance-your-security-control
• Part 2 - http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/part-2-using-network-filtering-enhance-your-security-control
• Part 3 - http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/part-3-using-network-filtering-enhance-your-security-control

If you have additional ideas on use System Defense - please share

Hello Intel vPro Community!

I'm going to talk to you today a little bit about how to use Windows Powershell to set Intel vPro power profiles. I'll provide a quick bit of background first on what power profiles are, and why you'd want to be able to set them with Powershell.

Intel vPro power profiles are nothing more than a setting in the Management Engine that tells the AMT chip when to be powered up, and when not to be powered up. In some cases, you may want vPro to be inactive during sleep states, or after the computer has lost power (eg. UPS failure).

In my case however, I want vPro to be always active. This is problematic, because Microsoft Configuration Manager's implementation of a provisioning server doesn't give you the option of setting the active power profile. Instead, during provisioning, ConfigMgr sets the active profile to whatever index "5" is. You'll actually see this in the amtopmgr.log file on your OOB (Out-Of-Band) service point during the provisioning process.

Because ConfigMgr decides the default power profile during provisioning, I've decided that I wanted to change it. Because Windows Powershell is an awesome automation tool, and because Intel's AMT Developer Toolkit (DTK) offers a .NET library that I can use in Powershell, I figured that I would figure out how to do it!

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You might remember my last post on how to use Powershell to connect to an AMT device. The process basically involves loading the aforementioned .NET DLL from the DTK, and then establishing a connection to the device. I didn't really get the opportunity to show you how to do a whole lot with it after making the connection though, so that's the purpose of this post! Let's go ahead and take a look at a few lines of Powershell code, so you can understand the retrieval, and setting of power profiles.

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# In my last Powershell script, I used the $amtdevice variable

# to reference the AmtSystem .NET object. We'll assume at this point

# that you have already connected to the AMT device based

# on my last article.

$amtdevice

# By using the .NET Reflector tool, we can see that the AmtSystem

# object has a property called SecurityAdmin, which returns an AmtSecurityAdmin

# object.

$AmtSecAdmin = $AmtDevice.SecurityAdmin

# The AmtSecurityAdmin object has a method called GetPowerPackages().

# After examining this data type in .NET Reflector, we can filter for only the two

# properties we want to see, the profile ID, and its Name. We'll use the Powershell

# Select-Object cmdlet to filter this data.

$AmtSecAdmin.GetPowerPackages() | Select-Object -Property ID,Name

# You should get some output looking something like this:

# 12834f94-10fb-dc4f-968e-1e232b0c9065 Desktop: ON in S0
# ab0086a1-7f9a-424c-a6e6-bb243a295d9e Desktop: ON in S0, S3
# acab8672-b496-e248-9b9e-9b7df91c7fd4 Desktop: ON in S0, S3, S4-5
# 4dcd327b-be6b-8943-a62a-4d7bd8dbd026 Desktop: ON in S0, ME Wake in S3
# 46732273-dc23-2f43-a98a-13d37982d855 Desktop: ON in S0, ME Wake in S3, S4-5
# baa419c5-6f6e-4d8d-b227-517f7e4595db Desktop: ON in S0, S3, S4-5, OFF After Power Loss
# ede30bd6-c504-462c-b772-d18018ee2fc4 Desktop: ON in S0, ME Wake in S3, S4-5, Off After Power Loss

# Once we have a listing of the power profiles available on the AMT device

# we can get the one that we want, and then set it. Since I always want my

# AMT device active, no matter the system's power state, I'm going to choose

# "Desktop: ON in S0, S3, S4-5" which is index 2 (in a zero-based collection).

$TargetPowerProfile = ($AmtSecAdmin.GetPowerPackages())[2]

# Now that I have a variable referencing the target power profile, I will set the

# profile on the AMT device. The AmtSecurityAdmin object has a method called

# SetActivePowerPackage() that takes one parameter: the power profile we have

# a reference to.

$AmtResult = $AmtSecAdmin.SetActivePowerPackage($TargetPowerProfile)

"Setting power profile to $($TargetPowerProfile.Name) resulted in $AmtResult!"

##### End Setting Power Profile #####

# Let's also take a quick look at how to get some basic information about

# the AMT device's provisioning data. We can figure out if IDE-R, SoL, and the

# WebUI are enabled. We'll use the AmtGeneralInfo object for this.

# Get a reference to the AmtGeneralInfo object

$AmtInfo = $amtdevice.Info

# Write out the current configuration settings

"SOL Enabled: $AmtInfo.SerialOverLanEnabled"

"IDE-R Enabled: $AmtInfo.IdeRedirectEnabled"

"WebUI Enabled: $AmtInfo.WebUiEnabled"

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

I hope this helps get you on your way to doing some cool Powershell / vPro automation! Let me know whether or not this helps you in your endeavors

Trevor Sullivan

Systems Engineer

OfficeMax Corporation

We had the Intel vPro technology Challenge at MMS 2008 - a competition where teams of two competed to fix a troubled PC using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 with PCs with Intel vPro technology. Check out how much fun this Challenge was at MMS 2008 this year:

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To see more videos from MMS 2008, go to: http://www.intel.com/go/mms/

When Intel released Intel vPro technology into the marketplace in 2006, the press asked us what the "v" in Intel vPro technology meant. Now that the technology has been in the marketplace for almost two years, we thought that the best answer to the question, "What does the "v" in Intel vPro technology mean to you?" would come from Intel customers, as well as from some of the technical experts from Intel and our partners who deal with our customers on an almost daily basis. See their answers below.

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To see more videos from MMS 2008, go here: http://www.intel.com/go/mms/

While at ManageFusion, we had a chance to talk with Lee Bender, Senior Technical Strategist for the Intel Alliance at Symantec Corporation.

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Lee showed off how the Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (BESR) takes advantage of Intel vPro technology. Intel vPro technology extends the reach of BESR, and helps prevent an IT administrator from visiting an end-user's desktop or notebook by enabling remote diagnosis and repair of a downed PC with an unavailable Operating System.

 
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Watch Lee's demonstration of Intel vPro technology with Symantec BESR below: