This week I'm in Portland, Oregon, where I call home. Its interesting for me since this is my first Super Computing conference, and soo far, I'm really impressed, not only by the intense knowledge and the plethera of scientific discovery all around, but also by the fact this conference is so well attended. There -s a huge trade show floor, filled to capacity where you can see everything from genome research to oil and gas exploration, to bio-computing. . It's very cool to see NASA, Oak Ridge Labratory, and many top universities all showing off the lastest in High Performance Computing, some very cool stuff indeed. From the point of view of higher learning and how super computers are changing the world, this is the place to be. Here are a few shots of the Intel booth in case you get a chance to come by and see us.

I'll be capturing some cool videos from the conference and you should keep a look out for these on Channel Intel at YouTube. Thanks for stopping by The Server Room.

I’ve been hearing about green IT for a while now and personally thought it was a lot more hype than true business value creation.   I was surprised coming over to the IT side to see a good deal of focus being applied to Sustainability.  A couple months ago, I asked a peer of mine working on Intel IT sustainability a simple, yet challenging question.

“Why should an IT manager or CIO bombarded with a 1,000 other things to think/worry about, care about sustainability?  How will it help them advance their careers or bring more IT value to the business.”

The answers I got from her plus a recent listing from Gartner of “IT for Green” as Number 4 on a Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010, helped shape my thinking and the title for this blog.

• Keep the Business Running/Legal.  As an ongoing activity, IT must always look at industry and regulatory trends to proactively plan for an ever-changing compliance landscape.  Many European Union countries and the US Environmental Protection Agency are creating regulations that affect the application of information technology.
• Green IT initiatives can impact ROI and Profitability. In addition to the benefits of electricity savings, the proper application of technology (like proactive server refresh, facility re-use) can affect land use, avoidance of new construction, boost asset utilization … all of which assist in improving corporate sustainability.
• Green IT initiatives can also reduce operational costs. I recently learned about the broad video conferencing capabilities that Intel IT has enabled to help employees collaborate across time zones and countries.  This capability has encouraged less travel for routine purposes avoiding unnecessary travel expense for employees delivering a dramatic multi-million dollar savings impact this current year.

The three reasons listed above are prudent IT operational activities and doing them represent best IT practices that have a solid impact on creating business value. Not doing them could actually have detrimental impacts to an IT career. Intel IT’s recent data center strategy identified that not only is proactive server refresh the biggest driver of financial value but also in the reduction of IT’s CO2 footprint. Another area where our business strategy benefited IT Sustainability was in our transition from a desktop driven PC fleet to a mobile PC fleet that boosted employee productivity while employing more energy efficient solutions.

However, IT sustainability also help serve as an example for corporate responsibility building brand, influence product purchase with an increased focus on energy efficiency and influence the improvement of business processes with a mind toward efficiency and elimination of redundancy and waste. 

Gartner's Top 10 list reinforces these sentiments where they identify that "IT can enable many green initiatives. The use of IT, particularly among the white collar staff, can greatly enhance an enterprise’s green credentials. Common green initiatives include the use of e-documents, reducing travel and teleworking. IT can also provide the analytic tools that others in the enterprise may use to reduce energy consumption in the transportation of goods or other carbon management activities.”

So while IT Sustainability may not be your most important IT or CIO priority, investing with an eye toward this topic is wise and is likely aligned with many other priorities you and your peers are already doing. 

For us inside Intel IT, it is now clearer to me why Intel IT maintains an IT Sustainability Program that supports Intel’s Corporate Sustainability initiative.  

Intel IT’s proof of concept efforts in data center cooling innovation earned us recognition as one of the 2009 Green 15 by Infoworld.com.  Together with Intel’s business leaders, our operational and investment efforts have helped Intel achieve a top 5 ranking as a green company by Newsweek.

Learn more about Intel IT’s lessons learned and best practices here.

Chris (twitter)

vPro provides many helpful tools for Help Desk support personnel such as the ability to reboot a vPro system to a CD-Rom image. Of course to use it, they must have permissions to access the firmware remotely. Check out this use case reference design: http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-4404. It provides a framework to use an Active Directory group to grant and revoke these firmware permissions on all vPro systems through out an environment. For non-SCCM users, this concept may be used with many other software packages such as SCS. Also included in the appendix is a method to reconfigure vPro systems without a full unprovision. Enjoy!

I have never heard our storage processors called sexy.  Ever.  We just recently announced the details of our next gen processor, Jasper Forest, which will officially start shipping in early 2010. We integrated a lot of key storage features into the Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor 5500 series and the storage industry seems to really like it.  Our animation is posted on YouTube and one viewer called it a sexy beast.  We also had an executive from HP, Dave Roberson, Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Storage Works division talk about how HP is designing it into future storage products.  Check out the video, we are pretty excited about it!

If you are moving to an Altiris 7 environment (Symantec Management Platform or Dell Client Management platform), and already have familiarity in working with vPro in an Altiris 6 environment - take a look at this article on Symantec Connect

The article provides 4 quick insights:

• Pre-defined TaskServer jobs for configuring and maintaining
• Checking and fixing the OOB Site Service installation
• Once OOB Discovery is enabled, using Filters to determine what systems have Intel AMT
• Placement of the remote configuration certificate (different than Altiris 6 environments)

One of the new additions to Config Manager SP2 is native support of wireless access for managing clients with AMT.  Microsoft has built in support for configuring enterprise level wireless profiles such as WPA2-Enterprise.  These are wireless profiles that support RADIUS authentication using an authentication server to decide whether or not a given client is allowed to access the network.  Config Manager SP2 does not support wireless profiles that use pre-shared keys (PSK).  If you use security standards like WPA2-PSK/WPA2-Personal in your environment you will need to use the scripting framework tool to generate a script that can configure this option outside of Config Manager.

Mohan Veeramachaneni has put together several guides that explain how to configure the back-end RADIUS authentication components and access point configuration.

Cisco ACS

Configure Cisco ACS Server for Navigating Secure Networks with AMT/vPro

Microsoft NPS

Simple Configuration of Microsoft NPS as Radius for 802.1X - Part 1

Simple Configuration of Microsoft NPS as Radius for 802.1X - Part 2

Microsoft IAS

Step-by-step Guide for Navigating Secure Networks (802.1x) with Intel® AMT™ using Microsoft® SCCM SP1 & Microsoft® Radius (IAS)

Matt Royer has a blog entry that covers wireless profile management in Config Manager SP2.  The process he outlines is still the same in the release version of SP2.

http://communities.intel.com/community/openportit/vproexpert/microsoft-vpro/blog/2009/06/05/a-closer-look-at-sccm-sp2-beta-oob-wireless-management-wireless-profile-management

Key things to remember about wireless management with Config Manager

• Config Manager will not update a wireless profile that is currently in use.
• Config Manager now uses DNS entries to resolve client names.  You may run into a case where a client has switched between a wired or wireless connection and AMT is temporarily inaccessible due to delays in DNS update propagation.  DNS caching on your Config Manager server can also cause this to occur.  You can try running the “ipconfig /flushdns” command from a command prompt to clear the local DNS cache on your Config Manager server.
• Launching a Serial-over-LAN session over a wireless connection while the client’s OS is using that same connection will cause the wireless network to be cut off to the OS.

Hoy tenemos una buena noticia que contarles, ya que desde el 17 de noviembre está disponible el nuevo sitio Intel “Patrocinando el futuro” en Español, y ahora todos los latinoamericanos podrán informarse sobre el papel de Intel en el diseño mismo del futuro de la humanidad, porque nuestra compañía no solo es una productora de microprocesadores.

El nuevo sitio nos trae el futuro a nuestras computadoras, porque nos acerca a una interesante visión sobre sanidad, ocio, medio ambiente y comunicaciones: ¿Cómo eran en el pasado, cómo son ahora? ¿cómo serán en unos años? en ese futuro que Intel está patrocinando para poder hacer posible todo aquello que está en nuestra imaginación e incluso lo que todavía no hemos ni siquiera soñado. En la nueva página podemos encontrar los mejores comerciales de Intel subtitulados al español, para que puedan disfrutar de todos nuestros rockstars y conocer así las diversas facetas de Intel. Las herramientas interactivas no faltarán, como la divertida aplicación para diseñar tu propio auto del futuro y compartirlo con tus amigos.

Como el futuro es el lema son secciones importantes en el sitio: el cuidado de la naturaleza necesario para que el medio ambiente tenga un mañana posible, el futuro de las comunicaciones como la posibilidad de transmitir un video de HD en pocos minutos, lo nuevo en entretenimiento, en especial el 3D y los mundos virtuales, la posibilidad de pensar nuevos hábitats, nuevas casas, nuevos autos. Todo esto está dentro de los contenidos que nos brinda  “Patrocinando el Futuro”, un espacio en la Red que pareciera llevarnos a la ciencia ficción, pero que en realidad gracias a Intel está dentro de nuestras posibilidades.

Links

• Intel.

In order to deliver to the continued promise of Moore’s Law, Intel’s Information Technology team needs to enable Intel’s Silicon designers with the tools, capabilities and streamlined processes to bring higher performing processors to market every year.  The latest generation of 45nm products (ie the Intel microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem) was an especially challenging project for us. 

With Intel design computing demand growing an average of 45% year over year coupled with the rich technology capabilities in the 45nm based Nehalem micro-architecture, the computational requirements of silicon tape-out (the last stage of design before manufacturing) represented an approximate 13x increase in increase in demand from prior 65nm processors. Staring at this demand (1.2 million hours of compute demand per day) plus a need to bring products to market faster and more efficiently, our IT team realized we needed to do something different - our standard grid computing solution that was sufficient for earlier stage design work was insufficient for tape-out. 

Solution: Intel IT built a High Performance Computing (HPC) solution that currently rank in the Top 500 list of supercomputers (#261, #308, Nov 09) and feature a new parallel storage environment to support our 45nm Silicon tape-out process.  The details of this effort are captured in this whitepaper. 

In summary, the Intel IT HPC solution employs two of the world’s fastest supercomputers to create the fastest microprocessors helping Intel achieve the following results.

·         Completed 45nm tape-out in 10day, less than HALF the time of prior products

·         Delivered an estimated incremental value of $44M to Intel

I can’t wait for what tomorrow will bring as Intel IT is already upgrading and evolving this HPC solution to support our future generations of micro-processor designs. Tune in tomorrow at SuperComputing 2009 in Portland where Shesha Krishnapura from Intel IT will present more details on our HPC environment or join us December 8th, 2009 from 10-12am PST for a live chat with Intel IT experts in the Server Room

Chris (twitter)

Ok it may be that your IT department or enterprise applications are limiting your opportunity to adopt 64 bit version of your favorite CAD application, but your inability to adopt a 64 bit CAD application can be very limiting to your productivity. 

Here as an example from a recent discussion with some end users who are involved in a workstation pilot with Intel.  When they moved to a 64 bit version of their favorite CAD application the time to open a 2.5GB file dropped from 20 minutes to less than 1.  

Question - How many files does your engineering team open a day?  What is the cost of the 20 minutes?

Customers operating in a 32 bit world are forced to work with smaller models.  You knew that.  And of course smaller file sizes will open faster. 

But….

Rather than working with the chassis, engine and transmission in a single view, you will need to work each one independently.  The results is you may miss a design interference, a misalignment or another obvious design issue, because you only had a partial view of the entire design.  More rework and more delays.

Yes but... many of the enterprise applications you use are 32 bit and you need to have a 32 bit workstation environment in order to access these tools.  That may have been true once, but with technology like Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O and Parallels™ Workstation Extreme software you now have the opportunity for an uncompromised workstation experience.  You get all the benefits of a 64 bit CAD application and you can still work within a 32 bit environment when you need to.  You can even pass the data between workstation environments.

Do not be too slow to adopt a 64 bit version of your favorite CAD application, just opening files faster and working with a complete design can make eth cost of a new workstation irrelevant.

To learn more about Intel® Xeon® based workstations visit www.intel.com\go\workstation

Are you ready to innovate faster or explore more design options in less time than ever before?

The digital workbench powered by two Intel Xeon 5500 processors gives you the opportunity to create, test and modify your idea right at your workstation. Have no doubt, workstations powered by two processors, with eight total cores, sixteen computational threads, and memory capacities up to 192GB are proving extremely capable at analysis-driven design.

Today’s digital workbench is nothing at all like last year’s workstation, which may have struggled to design and simulate. This new breed of a workstation presents you with the capability to rapidly play “what if?”

What is driving the interest in the digital workbench?

Organizations of all shapes and sizes are looking for opportunities to reduce design cycle times and associated costs without negatively impacting product performance. One potential method of achieving this is by enabling designers to consider the validity of a greater number of design concepts earlier in the design cycle. This may not only shorten design cycles, but it may also enable you to ultimately deliver a more favorable product configuration.

The product development rules are changing.

Manufacturers are recognizing that by reordering product design activities, they may be able to achieve a more efficient product development process. By empowering engineers with easy-to-use and powerful 3D conceptual design tools, together with early access to CAE applications, engineers may be able develop the most advantageous designs before committing them to labor-intensive detailed design processes.

Isn’t this old news?

Many manufacturers agree the greatest opportunity to impact product development cost is by bringing simulation forward. That is old news. Manufacturers know that when product analysis or simulation results trail the detailed design process then product changes become extremely expensive and negatively impact new product release schedules. Worse yet, they also realize that changes made downstream in a design cycle are “last minute” and almost always imply compromises on original design goals. This, of course, cuts into the product performance and profits of the new or updated product.

Using simulation and getting results before the detailed design process begins helps ensure that the CAD models meet performance requirements, mitigating last-minute and expensive design changes.

OK, the product development rules may be changing, but I still need an expert.

No doubt, the expert is still needed. However, advancements at companies like ALTAIR, ANSYS, SIMULIA, MSC, SpaceClaim and others are all making it easier to bring simulation and analysis further upstream in the design process.

As one example, let’s look at the ANSYS Workbench platform. This solution provides an easy-to-use framework that guides the user through even complex multi-physics analyses with drag-and-drop simplicity. It supports bi-directional CAD connectivity and enables the idea of simulation-driven product development.

ANSYS is an example of what ISVs are doing to create tools that learn from the experts and export them to others who need access to their knowledge. Yes, the expert is still very much needed, but leveraging the expert’s knowledge and driving it upstream in the design process is needed even more.

The new model

Using the combined hardware and software technologies delivered through a digital workbench, engineers can now create a single digital model that gives them the ability to design, visualize and simulate their products faster than ever.

This hardware and software suite enables users to create a digital prototype and can help engineers to reduce their reliance on costly physical prototypes and get more innovative designs to market faster.

The digital workbench helps users bring together design data from all phases of the product development process into a single digital model that can be rapidly changed, tested and validated.

What can you do to test the promise of the digital workbench?

Today’s workstation can provide you with a magnificent digital canvas to create tomorrow today. You need to decide if you want to explore reordering your product design activities and potentially achieve a more efficient product development process.

Today’s workstation gives engineers a new tool that can be likened to a digital workbench. This tool, powered by two Intel Xeon 5500 series processors, hosts a suite of software applications that engineers can employ to create and test their ideas. The pliers, hammer and nails found on a workbench in a garage or basement have now been replaced with digital tools that promise to accelerate innovations via a process known as digital prototyping. Its enablers include application tools like detailed CAD, CAE and PIM. Together they represent the new digital workbench—a powerful innovation tool you can use to bring your ideas forward faster than ever before.

Are you ready to use a digital workbench?

Visit www.intel.com/go/workstation to see which workstation is right for you.

If you are one of the many organisations that is planning on adopting Windows 7 and are wondering whether there are any implications for your vPro systems, then this blog is for you...

The implications of Windows 7 on vPro can be summarised as relating to at least one or more of the following areas:

Let's start with the Management Console...

If you are using Microsoft SMS, for example, as your management console then you should be aware that Microsoft officially doesn't support Windows 7 clients with SMS and therefore if you wish to manage your Windows 7 clients you will need to transition to Microsoft SCCM. Therefore, when planning your vPro migration to Windows 7 you need to actually to migrate to SCCM before hand.

For those that do migrate to SCCM there are some additional implications which are indirect for the Windows 7 migration, but are part of the SCCM with vPro package. As this is not a posting on SCCM, I'll only mention briefly that you need to be prepared to have an Enterprise Certificate Authority, potentially have to make use of the WS-MAN translator (if you have any AMT Firmware that is prior to 3.2.1), you will need to upgrade to latest AMT Firmware versions and you will be integrated with Active Directory.

Regarding AMT Drivers (namely HECI/MEI and LMS/SOL)...

As the drivers are installed at the OS level, it doesn't come as a surprise that there might be a requirement for drivers to be able to install on a new operating system.

1. AMT 2.x based systems - currently no planned official AMT Windows 7 drivers (use compatability mode)
2. AMT 3.x based systems - official AMT Windows 7 drivers will be available by OEMs in Q1 of 2010 (for now use compatability mode)
3. AMT 4.x based systems - you will require drivers version number 4.2 (otherwise you could use compatability mode)
4. AMT 5.x based systems - you will require drivers version number 5.2 (otherwise you could use compatability mode)

If you are not familiar with compatability mode, here is how you do it:

1.      Right click on the driver installation file à Properties à Compatibility tab  (per sample screen shot below):

2.      Select the mode (I guess either Windows Vista or Windows XP SP2 or SP3)

3.      Click Apply/OK

4.      Right click installation file and run as Administrator and install the drivers (or alternatively prior to step 3 tick the box of run as administrator)

Btw, the exact same process can be used for AMT 4.x and AMT 5.x drivers – i.e. take existing not 4.2/5.2 level drivers and install them in compatibility mode.

It is useful to know that the 4.2 and 5.2 level drivers are actually available for download fromt the OEM sites; take Dell for example: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&ServiceTag=&SystemID=LAT_E6400&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=&impid=

and

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=&impid=&SystemID=PLX_960

Lastly, we have the AMT Firmware...

Strictly technically speaking, Windows 7 doesn't require a different kind of AMT Firmware, since the firmware sits underneath the operating system anyway. What is required though is the latest AMT Firmware (4.2 and 5.2) so that it can interoperate with Microsoft SCCM in the best and most stable manner. Therefore what might initially seemed as no need to upgrade AMT firmware to work with Windows 7 actually becomes a recommendation to do so.

Hopefully this has provided some clarity on the technical requirements around vPro and Windows 7. There are some particular compelling points for having vPro systems and leveraging them for a Windows 7 migration deployment, however this is covered by other blogs and materials out there, such as: http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3096

Here’s the situation, I recently purchased an ATOM set top box for my TV. I purchased this ATOM based box so that I could play my movies, audio and have an internet device for the TV for the family to leverage (facebook, shopping, checking out sites as a family). I was updating the OS, patching, configuring and ended up rebooting it a few times and then of course throw in a few HARD boots in the middle of it all.  I then went to boot it on and this popped up ..

Error:  "Corrupt file - NTOSKERNEL.exe"

My first comment was “ah bummer”, then I said okay I’ll just do an IDE-R/SOL and just copy the NTOSKRNL.exe file, no big deal.  Oh but wait, it wasn’t a vPro system and at that very moment I realized how key vPro is even to me.   I then spent 10+ hrs throughout the week at nights, lunch, etc.. building bootable USB’s, CD’s that would replicate vPro functionality, with little success and trust me I was asking everybody for input, thoughts and help.   At the end of the week I just pulled the drive, copied the file and then it was back to good again.

Would I have paid for vPro in this box prior, Probably not, would I now pay extra for it, that would be a YES!.   if it fails again I’m going to just pull the drive, but seriously what a distraction that was to unhook cables, take out the drive, hook up to another system, copy file, replace, rehook, power up.

So now as I explore more devices in the home, I’m thinking more about “What if?” it needs to be remotely managed – what would I do, what is my baseline requirement.  

Very good video on How Intel® RPAT works and can help you!  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dopaug3Zs3g

The Economy and MSPs

Many companies in the US are reacting negatively to the current economic conditions; defending their position in the market and tightening budgets. The savvy MSP is turning this environment to their benefit by capitalizing on the efficiency of scale. SMBs can reduce the cost of managing their IT assets by hiring an MSP who spreads the cost over many smaller companies. Then, as the economy swings back, MSPs can organically increase their revenue by adding new and greater levels of service offerings, as their SMB customers grow.

Intel^® vPro™ Technology and the MSP

With Intel® vPro™ Technology, MSPs can monitor, manage and repair computers anytime; even if a computer is powered off (laptops must be plugged into AC), the OS is inoperable, management agents are missing, or hardware (such as a hard drive) has failed.  When integrated into a third-party management solution, computers with Intel vPro Technology let service providers spend less time managing and maintaining computers, driving down cost and increasing the SLA with your customers. Usages include:

1.   Green IT – Saving energy is becoming a key driver for selling managed services. Even though users are asked turn off their computers, many are left on after work hours. You can schedule a task in your 3^rd party management console that checks for computers that are left on, and perform a graceful OS shutdown. Now, energy saving policies set by your customer can be enforced, and a scheduled Intel vPro Technology power-up command, before normal working hours, saves their employees time at the start of the day.

2.   Maintenance off-hours – Disk defrag, cleaning up temp files, SW updates, AV updates, back-ups; these are all maintenance tasks you can perform to keep systems running at peak performance, and as secure as possible. However, performing these tasks during the day can be annoying and disruptive to your customer’s employees. By scheduling an off-hours power on and maintenance task, ensures you have a higher SLA, while not interrupting employees during working hours.

3.   Deeper hardware inventory – Intel vPro Technology provides the next level of detail on HW inventory; providing data that is not currently available by standard operating systems.. Intel vPro Technology displays the list of components reported by the BIOS; with accurate manufacturer, model and specifications. This allows you to identify replacement parts, and more accurately track changes to the computer, without having to visit the PC.

Intel vPro Technology can also help repair systems remotely and more quickly than OS level tools. If the OS is down, the only option without Intel vPro Technology is to roll a truck. A remote terminal application that supports serial-over-LAN and IDE-redirect (both Intel vPro Technologies) allows:

1.   OS repair remotely – Typically, when an OS is disabled or severely corrupted, the only option is to roll a truck with your trusty CD of diagnostic tools. With Intel vPro Technology you can remotely boot up a computer using a Pre-boot Environment OS and toolset pre-staged on a share drive in your customers’ network. Remotely repairing the NTLoader.dll or a Master Boot Record are examples of how Intel vPro Technology eliminates the need for a truck roll, saving your customer time and improving your bottom line.

2.   Catastrophic hard disk failure – When a hard disk fails, it normally takes 2 truck rolls to remediate; one to identify the failure and another to repair. By remotely booting to a Pre-boot Environment OS and toolset, you can validate the failure and get accurate replacement part specifications, eliminating the first truck roll. If you have a recent image of that system, you could even ship the part directly to the customer with that image, or re-image remotely once the customer has replaced the part. For urgent requests, you have saved both truck rolls, and expedited getting your customer back in business!

Buying and Configuring Intel vPro Technology

Many of the tools you have to remotely monitor and manage your customer’s networks, have Intel vPro Technology integration. Check with your Remote Monitoring and Management or Network Management software vendor to determine which of the above use-cases they support. This link will take you to the Intel resource page for MSPs: msp.intel.com

Many manufacturers have PCs and Laptops with Intel vPro Technology; follow this link for model numbers. Refresh your customer client infrastructure with vPro-based PCs now so you will be able to reap increased margins and expand your business growth potential, tomorrow!: Order an Intel® vPro™ technology "Activation-Ready" PC

There are several methods to configure Intel vPro Technology with the appropriate security, network, and operational parameters before a third-party management application can access the system. This link will help you determine which method is best suited for your environment, and provides implementation  guides for each method at the Intel vPro Expert Center: Intel® vPro™ Technology SMB & MSP Provisioning Method Selection Guide