SMB Talk

Feet on the Street - vPro Series - Meet Teri McFaul

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:17:22 GMT

Feet on the Street series continues with a 1:1 w/ Teri McFaul. Hear what Teri does for Intel & vPro.

Feet on the Street - Matt Royer (Microsoft vPro Guru)

Feet on the Street - vPro Series - Meet Wendy West

Feet on the Street - It's time to talk with Gregory Bryant

Feet on the Street - vPro Series - Meet Jake G. - Part I

Are you Maintaining, Maximizing or Migrating to vPro?

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:37:43 GMT

Over the next few posts I would like to describe 3 different scenarios as they apply to the adoption of vPro technology. I will be leveraging 3 categories as it describes to the IT shop (Maintain your baseline, Maximize your potential and Migrate completely to the new technology). These categories also relate directly to the % of vPro machines that are in your IT shop.

First, let’s start with maintaining your baseline. What are the challenges facing the IT shop and support provider of IT services as it relates to the client computers? Manageability and Security of that asset, along with ensuring lower costs for keeping them updated and the highest level of availability as it relates to the usage. However what is missing above is the Energy savings piece of the equation. To date our experience has been that integrating a power management & energy savings profile in your IT environment for vPro machines is an easy way to keep your baseline going and just add one new usage in your environment. I consider this to be maintaining your baseline, but making a small modification to realize benefits. Specifically this means the standard ability with turning Machines off that can reduce the power bills, however it is just a small change in the current IT policies/practices.

Now for the IT shop that is looking to Maximize your potential and have new level’s of service. The opportunity to implement more usages is always possible, for example if you are looking to move beyond the power use case to more of the remote repair to save $$’s in both Tech Time, downtime, productivity of the employees. I would note that the further you look to maximize your potential it will require additional planning, testing and of course effort to do so. I will deep dive deeper into the impact of each additional usage and what you can expect from a change perspective for your IT shop in the coming blogs.

Last case is the Migration path.. full migration of ZERO/Little vPro to all vPro ( here is where it gets fun ).. Must haves are: Good Strategy, Architecture awareness, Manageability/Security Landscape, & Top Pain points. If you have these at your disposal you are in good shape to have immediate value to your migration.

I look forward to deep diving into each of these over the coming weeks.

Josh H

Intel IT Director - Did you hear about this in the vPro 2008 keynote?

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:16:36 GMT

Hi all,

If you heard the keynote with Gregory Bryant, you probably heard Frank Soqui talk about IT director. You may be wondering to get this new software - well here's the link www.intel.com/go/itdirector. however it's no live until next week. check back..

Josh H

MS SCE - vPro Use Cases Supported

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 06:32:03 GMT

Here are the key use cases supported by MS SCE (Microsoft System Center Essentials). Each of the use cases below will reference a certain page in the Manageability Pack located @ http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/isn/downloads/Manageability/Intel_AMT_MP_Guide.pdf. Therefore I highly recommend you download the PDF and then cross reference the list below.

System Discovery

Discovery allows the Management Pack to locate Intel® AMT systems. During the discovery process, the Management Pack retrieves asset information from the Intel® AMT subsystem. Discovery needs to be performed before you can perform any other Intel® AMT-related tasks.

For details on the different ways to perform discovery, see “Discovering Systems” on page 87.

Viewing Asset Information

You can view information about the Intel® AMT system’s hardware assets (CPU, memory, and more).

For details on viewing asset information, see “Retrieving Asset Identification Information” on page 97.Intel® AMT Management Pack for Ops Manager and Essentials • Installation and User’s Guide 6

Power Control Operations

Power control operations enable you to remotely control the power states of Intel® AMT-supported systems.

You can apply the following power control operations to Intel® AMT systems:

•power-up

•power-down

•power cycle

•reset

You can specify the way that a system should boot, depending on the specific system implementation.

For details on power control operations, see “Power Control Operations” on page 101.

SOL/IDE Redirection Operations

The SOL/IDE Redirection feature enables you to remotely perform the following redirection operations on Intel® AMT-supported systems:

•Serial Over LAN (SOL): Allows you to display the non-graphic boot screens of an Intel® AMT machine, thereby allowing you to modify BIOS entries or to change the way that the system boots.

•IDE Redirection (IDER): Allows you to boot the Intel® AMT machine from a boot image located elsewhere on the network.

For details on redirection operations, see “Redirection Operations” on page 109.

System Defense

The System Defense feature allows you to define multiple system defense policies and apply them individually to a system.

For details on the System Defense feature, see “System Defense” on page 121.Chapter 1 • Introduction7

Event Handling

You can configure Intel® AMT systems to send PET (Platform Event Trap) events to multiple event collectors, and view these events in Ops Mgr/Essentials. For information on the PET protocol, refer to the ASF specification at http://www.dmtf.org/standards/asf/.

For details on registering for PET events, see “Registering and Unregistering for PET Events” on page 137.

For details on monitoring PET events, see “Monitoring Alerts (PET Events)” on page 157.

Looking ahead to the next post..

the plan is to showcase each use case in quick video's and post out.. stay tuned for more..

Josh H

SyAM - Use Cases with vPro

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:49:11 GMT

I am in the process of setting up a SyAM environment and ran across their use case documentation on their site. While I'm just in the reading phase right now I am pleased with what I am seeing around the use cases and documentation for configuration. here's the TOC from their document - http://syamsoftware.com/main/products/SyAM_AMT_Common_Uses-Draft_v5-Final.pdf

Use Case 1: Patch Deployment

Use Case 2: BIOS Flash

Use Case 3: BIOS Changes

Use Case 4: System Recovery from Corrupt NTLDR File

Use Case 5: Restoring the Operating System

My next step is to finish installation & test it out. If you are using SyAM i'd like to hear from you on your experience, configuration and any vPro relevant information.

Josh H

Management Console ? why?

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:29:17 GMT

I was asked recently which consoles are available for Small / Medium buisness, therefore I talked with my peers in the SMB space to pulse them for the info below.. here’s what they said..

Intel tools are designed only to demonstrate AMT functionality and do not include all of the features one would need to manage a network.

The 2 main SW packages for companies 200-1000 that have Intel vPro Technology built in are:

SyAM http://syamsoftware.com/main/index.php

Microsoft SCE: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/essentials/default.mspx?pr=blog

For over 1000:

LANDesk http://www.landesk.com/

Altiris http://www.altiris.com/

Microsoft SCCM http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configurationmanager/en/us/default.aspx

So.. the next question is what do you do with the infrastructure that is less than 200? This is what I’m going after to figure out and post. Also to note is that we just finished building our first SCE server in my lab and we’re managing a few machines and it looks pretty good, of course I’ve yet to try automation & other tasks, currently just testing the OOB capability and the functionality for vPro. Nicole on my team is going to blog about this more. Things I wish I knew BEFORE I installed SCE (System Center Essentials) As for SyAM I saw this installed at an End Users site right before the summer and looked like a lot of the DTK functionality integrated in, however I’m still working to get it installed on a console to test/break, etc..

So.. next journey, finish out the use cases on the MS System Center Essentials console with Nicole and then start-up our SyAM testing with a 1/2 dozen boxes. If you want to see something specific or discuss a certain area please let us know as we dig deeper into SMB setup's.