Take a look at the posted document on Radmin (Remote Administrator).  This free tool (Viewer) allows technicians to gain access to AMT basic functions and will work with any provisioned ISV under SMB or Non-TLS Enterprise Mode.  This tool can be provided to IT Techicians who may not have access to the ISV console to perform the basic AMT functions on a provisioned client.

http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-4309

Our most recent issue of the Intel vPro Technology Heartbeat was published this morning. This newsletter is a compilation of Intel vPro resources that were collected over the last two weeks. In this issue, check out the article series on Intel Active Management Technology that was published by our partners at the Intel Software Network's Manageability community. We also have a bunch of webinars coming up around Windows 7 and Dynamic Virtual Computing. Registration links are in the newsletter!

Read the newsletter, or subscribe to receive it in your inbox automatically.

Over the last week I decided to take a journey, one without social media and interacting with folks online.  What I learned is the following:

• Took longer to do my job (it’s true!!)
• Missed out a few key interactions that would have helped me – it’s true, I am now combing back through to look a few posts – example:  Spiceworks just announced a new plug in capability that is leveraging vPro
• Realized I was not sharing as much as I could have – I was working on win7 & vPro for SMB, defining the ease of use of both technologies in the 3-5 PC space.  I missed sharing this information out to the team and group.
• Had a few dialogues around me missing something online – a few folks ping’d me throughout the week if I had seen certain things (from technology to people movement inside Intel)

So why does this matter to vPro?  Well, I believe part of the success of realizing your vPro value is to use our community, interact with us on twitter and be a part of the technology adoption and usage.    I also realized that usage of our technology is not confined to how we believe it will help you, but also how it will be used in different situations, location’s, and relevant to your business.   

If you want to connect with us, here’s who’s on twitter for vPro?  Here’s a few accounts.

IntelvPro twitter.com/intelvpro

SmartchickPdx twitter.com/smartchickpdx

Joshprostar twitter.com/joshprostar

I also missed the interactions online that I usually participate in throughout the week.

HI all,

Internally we are cooking up a # of topics that we would like to share from Use Cases, BIOS versions, form factor's, etc..   However we wanted to ask you first as a community, what would you like to hear more on?  What piece of vPro do we need to show more?

Let us know.. leave a comment or shoot me an email josh@intel.com.

Thank You

Josh H

In recent weeks, I've received a number of questions about Dell Client Manager 3.0 ability to configure Intel vPro technology.

I have not had the opportunity to review the latest official documentation from Symantec\Altiris or Dell on how to configure Intel vPro technology. 

Therefore, this blog provides my perspective and approach.  As I'm working with Altiris 7 and vPro on an almost daily basis, authoring a complete set of new documentation has not been accomodating to present schedules, tasks, etc.

I ask for your patience and understanding.   This is by no means the final and complete answer - it's a "best effort"

A few key points to keep in mind. 

• Dell Client Management version 3 is based on Altiris 7
• A video posted at http://vproexpert.blip.tv/file/1900890/ - about 5 minutes into that video the focus is on configuring
• Much of the Altiris\vPro configuration requirement for Altiris v7 are very similar to v6.   The above posted video will highlight the differences.
• For an Altiris v6 vPro configuration baseline, see material posted about 2 years ago - http://www.symantec.com/connect/videos/video-workshop-intel-vpro-activation
• If you are totally new to Intel vPro technology, I invite you to first learn what the technology is capable of doing.  Here is one article resource example - http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/combining-band-and-out-band-management

After working with Intel vPro technology for over 3 years - I still get surprised by little features that appear in the product.   Some features might not sound too interesting at first, but upon seeing how these are used my opinion changes.

One such features is the "PC Alarm Clock" capability in AMT 5, with software development support in the Intel AMT SDK 5.1.

An overview of this features is explained at http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3483.... why that article is posted in the Server Room area of Open Port I do not know.

I was at IDF2009 this week and had a chance to visit the McAfee showcase booth.  What I saw was very impressive.   PC Alarm Clock provides a uniform "wake-up" at a defined time with an indication of what caused the power-on.   Was the system powered on because of a user hitting the power button or did the PC Alarm clock trigger the event?   Before visiting the McAfee booth, my first thought was "hey - that can be done via a system BIOS".   Well - I got some education.

Not all OEM BIOS setups support a timed wake-up.   If they do - having a uniform access to configure\control across OEMs would require disparate tools.   Plus - having a mechanism for an agent to know whether the system was powered due to user local to system or scheduled time is helpful.  Plus - an Intel AMT power-on event to a collection of systems is possible IF those systems are connected and IF you are okay with a unicast message to each system thus having a potential delay from first system to last system that powers on.  Plus - with PC Alarm Clock within Intel AMT - the time is synchronized.  Etc, etc

So here's the situation.   To avoid disrupting work hours with anti-virus scans or other maintenance routines... what if the system were scheduled to power-on at 3am to perform these tasks.   If powered on via PC Alarm clock, what McAfee agent will do is sense this and know that it's time to run a scan, and so forth.   At the conclusion of the scan, the McAfee setup will gracefully shutdown the system.   Thus - all assigned systems get a set time to power-on... and at that set time, all systems power-up, check to ensure it was a scheduled power-on, run the scan, and then return to an off start gracefully.

Ok - to some that might seem too simple to really matter.   But to me, after working with various management solutions and Intel vPro technology - that's a better cool approach.   It's a difference of push vs. pull... and when you're talking about hundreds or thousands of systems being orchestrated to perform an event... that little feature called "PC Alarm Clock" in the right hands such as McAfee... it's pretty cool

What do you think?

Click the thumbnails to see more detail. To download the presentation, visit http://www.intel.com/go/idfsessions.

Roadmap - Intel vPro Technology

KVM remote control

Visual remote access - adds another layer on top of things like CIRA.

Architecture overview - remote management console makes secure connection to machine- Yasser shows how chipset/graphics communications to the remote machine.

Out of Office Connectivity

Fast call for help and remote pc assist technology

Remote pc assist - for end users who don't have corporate IT - small businesses, home users

Wireless without running OS - works both in band or out of band

Remote Encryption Management

Supports software full disk encryption, TCG OPAL, and Seagate DriveTrust.