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Microsoft Manageability

July 2008
Matt Royer
1

As referenced in the Overview of SMS/Intel SCS migration to SCCM SP1 blog post, Intel has developed a utility to easy the migration of vPro Client that have been activated on SMS/SCS to SCCM SP1.

 

The Production version of the Intel SCS to SCCM Migration Utility has been released and will be available for downloaded from the following location shortly: http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/3898.htm

 

A User Guide on how to use the migration utility has been included in the download.

 

--Matt Royer

 

 

1 Comments Permalink Tags: sccm_sp1, sccm, sms, amt, vpro, migration, matt_royer
William York
0

I have recently posted a new Quick Start guide to help you quickly setup your SCCM SP1 lab environment and start testing the Out of Band management capabilities for your vPro systems.

 

Intel vPro Technology Out of Band Management Quick Start Install Guide for SCCM SP1 Rev1.9.1

 

 

As always, feedback is highly encouraged and appreciated.

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

Bill

0 Comments Permalink Tags: sccm_sp1, quick_start_guide, bill_york, oob
William York
0

 

During my lab setup of SCCM and trying to get Agent Initiated Provisioning to work for a vPro system, I was running into a basic issue of the SCCM agent being able to auto-discover the SCCM Site Server. After installing the SCCM Agent on the vPro system, I would initiate, from the vPro Client, Control Panel > Configuration Manger > Advanced Tab > Configurations Settings > Discover Button, and would receive an error that the client was unable to discover the SCCM server.

 

 

So I started looking at the SCCM Help file. I ran into the section about extending the active directory to enable this site discovery (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb633121(TechNet.10).aspx). But not only do you need to extend the active directory, you also need to Create the System Management container, set security permissions on this container, and enable Active Directory publishing for the Configuration Manager site to this container. These steps will allow clients to automatically detect the server locator points and management points (which must be added to your SCCM Site Server).

 

 

After following these steps, I was able to immediately discover the SCCM server with my Agent installed on my vPro system. Now I can move on with the AMT provisioning process.

 

 

TechNet also provides alternative steps that allow you to update your WINS environment without extending the schema and/or publishing this information to the System Management container. You will need to determine if this WINS update is acceptable for your environment or extending the AD is the right solution (see link below). I'm curious on feedback from the community if the updating of WINS would be acceptable in your environment and what issues this would create.

 

Related links from Microsoft TechNet to enable this capability.

How to extend Active Directory for SCCM: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680608(TechNet.10).aspx
Create the System Management container in AD: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb632591(TechNet.10).aspx
Set security permissions on the System Management container in the AD: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb633169(TechNet.10).aspx
Enable Active Directory publishing for the Configuration Manager site: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680711(TechNet.10).aspx
Verify that Configuration Manager has published the site information to AD: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693614(TechNet.10).aspx
How to Manually Add Configuration Manager Site Information to WINS: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb632567(TechNet.10).aspx

 

0 Comments Permalink Tags: sccm, sccm_sp1, agent_discovery
Matt Royer
1

Within SCCM there are two primary ways to provision a vPro Client: Using the Import Out of Band Computers Wizard and the In-band provisioning with the Configuration Manager client Agent. Because of the ease and automated provision, it is typically recommended that you leverage the In-band provisioning with the Configuration Manager client agent; however, there may be cases where this method may not work based on your environment or business process. This may leaves you with the only option of using the Import Out of Band Computers Wizard for vPro Client provisioning.

 

To provision clients with Import Out of Band Computer Wizard, you are required to supply at a minimum the Computer Name, FQDN, and UUID for the vPro client you are trying to provision. Hand retrieving and entering this data for a few vPro clients may be fairly straight forward; however, if you are in a scenario where you are trying to provision a large number of vPro clients it may become very time consuming. As part of the Import Out of Band Computer Wizard, you are able to specific a comma-separated values (CSV) formatted file that has these required attributes listed. With this capability available, you can technically mass import a large number of vPro clients to be provisioned; the challenge then becomes automating the retrieval of this Computer Name, FQDN, and UUID.

 

Example CSV File

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Select Source - Choose Mapping

 

 

Select Source - Data Preview

 

 

Select Source - Summary

 

 

There can be a variety of sources such as the Active Directory, Local Computer Operating System, alternate software inventory agent, etc (your imagination is the limitation) where you could potentially pull this information.

 

 

For example, this UUID Resolver is an example utility that will query your Active Directory for computers, determine if they are vPro Capable, connects to the OS, and Exports the Computer Name, FQDN, and UUID to a CSV files that can be imported through Import Out of Band Computer Wizard; once the hello packet is received, SCCM will provision the vPro Client (Special Thanks to Ariel Toporovsky for developing this example).

 

 

Another example may be to use a Software Agent or other remote execution capability to run a localized VBS, Perl Script, exe, etc that grabs the Computer Name, FQDN, and UUID locally from the client and copies the contents to a remote share to be consolidated; once there it can be imported through the SCCM Import Out of Band Computer Wizard.

 

 

What else can you think of? If you have any thoughts or tricks on how to automate this, please post your idea / exampls in the comments. Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

--Matt Royer

 

 

1 Comments Permalink Tags: sccm, sccm_sp1, provisioning, matt_royer
Matt Royer
0

 

Version 3.3 of the Intel Client Manageability Add-on has been released to bring more vPro manageability features to SMS. The following new features have been added:

 

  • Scheduled power command operations on collections. (Note that scheduled power commands are not executed on subcollections.)

  • Graceful shutdown (attempting to shut down a platform via its operating system) for Power Down operations on collections

  • Changes in the way the Add-on interprets and applies IP site boundaries within SMS, including an optional registry switch. If the switch is set, if the platform's subnet does not appear in the SMS properties for the platform, the platform will be considered as being in the site boundaries. Note: There is no change in the way the Add-on interprets and applies Active Directory site boundaries.

 

Intel Client Manageability Add-on version 3.3 can be downloaded from the following location: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Filter_Results.aspx?strOSs=All&strTypes=All&ProductID=2609&lang=eng&OSFullName=All%20Operating%20Systems :

 

 

 

 

 

--Matt Royer

0 Comments Permalink Tags: sms, addon, vpro, amt, matt_royer

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