1 year anniversary - YES!

I am so lucky to experience IDF (thank you Jason Davidson, Josh Hilliker and Kevin Ma). The atmosphere here is amazing. Wide varieties of people are here to enjoy what is new coming out of Intel. Opening key notes were invigorating and exciting. Craig Barrett kicked off the experience with his speech, "Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned," what a simple and powerful saying in Craig Barrett's speech.

Going through show floor area, where the majority of the demos are located, there is so much exciting new stuff, everything from virtualization to new hardware. Let me key you in on something that is going to big with vPro: remote help for your home computer. With this technology, you can have a key stroke on your PC, it will send a signal to several qualified providers that you can choose from, they will receive a code, and the one of your choice can fix your PC remotely. You would not even need to bring in your PC or have a tech come to your place of residence for most problems. Josh Hilliker is going to be putting up w a PDF about it here on the vPro Expert Center. Keep your eye out for some clips and more cool new features from different people on the Open Port site.

(Some cool give-a-ways!!)

Virtual World - a computer based world that represents all aspects of life, as we know it. There are many fun and exciting examples of ways people have turned aspects of our world into a virtual world, and often these are found in massively multiplayer online games. However, one virtual representation I have been learning about lately is one called virtual appliances. Virtual appliances represent complex software stacks in a virtual environment. However, with a virtual appliance we are taking something that is often very complex and have high maintenance costs and representing it as single application. The virtual appliances I have been learning about lately are not representing real life in a fun environment, but solving real problems by interfacing with the vPro features.

Recently Nicole Trent wrote a blog on Microsoft SCE. It is one of the many examples (you can find an abundance of appliances on the vPro Expert Center) of virtual appliances that can be used to interact with the features in vPro. These appliances are useful when you perform inventory and maintenance to vPro clients as they bundle the software you use to manage the clients into one location. Then you can use this to control your clients from your server by using the remote capabilities.

If you have a whole lot of clients in your business that need to be updated over night because it's critical for these to be in service for the day, you would can use a virtual appliance that contains the IT software needed to make up that script so IT wouldn't have to be there over night. These scripts can execute and maintain your machine while you're away from your desk, sleeping or having a fun weekend. Best of all, the IT people that make these scripts are allowed to have their nights and weekends as well, as the scripts can execute fully automated.

This is convenient for the "green" factor. We are able to send applications with aid of AMT without wasting anybody's time that would go desk side and put the application on each computer or if the computer itself needs help because it's in trouble. They would just apply it at one time not wasting time, money, and packaging (my past blogs emphasizing these features). When the alternative is having an IT person going from one site to another, this helps lower gas consumption.

This is just another tool to our future of virtual computing. The more comes out the more it helps aid in situations that only a few years ago that is changing the way our businesses are operating. Now that it's here we should be able to use it to it's full extent it's up to us to use push the limits.

P.S. This week most of us (yes vPro lovers, Mr. Josh Hilliker will be gracing us with his presence!) will be at IDF there will be a lot of good stuff coming out of the vPro Expert Center. If you cannot be there check, out the vPro site there will be blogs and radio shows (which by the way Blog Talk is on iTunes for free download- search Intel Open Port Radio) who know maybe you will hear me!! Stay tuned!

Listen in as your hosts talk with Dave McCray, Intel's IT Program Manager. Intel IT is a leader in the activation and use of AMT. They have activated & provisioned over 10k machines - hear how they did it, why they are doing it & how to make your integration better based on Intel IT's best known methods.

Stream from blogtalkradio or click play below to hear it now...

Now that Centrino2 with vPro is coming out, amongst the new features that it will carry is Client Initiated Remote Access (CIRA). I thought to myself "what is this?" My internet digging, tells me that it is a way for the server to communicate to the client via AMT, offsite through a Management Presence Server (MPS). When a user initiates a CIRA request to their MPS, then the MPS is able to reach the client, passing through Virtual Private Networks (VPN). Then it will be able to go through the same AMT communication channels as any Pro system that is on the local network. On the laptop that is wireless that notebook can be anywhere as long as it's plugged in to power, and can connect to the VPN.

Josh Hilliker did a blog about a month ago, and it has a great diagram showing everything I have said. Centrino 2 - Digging in deeper into CIRA

Another great video to look at is the Intel Centrino2: C.T. Phone Home video.

Sleep state manageability is another feature that Centrino2 will carry. It will be able to turn on and off the notebook remotely without it being turned on but it does still need to be in the VPN. The device needs to be plugged in; it can't be running on the battery for this to work. You wouldn't want to try to turn on your computer and find out it's dead because all of the battery power is taken up trying to update your licenses or fixing any problems. The Centrino2 has energy saving features the notebook is using less energy with this new feature, and it is enabled at the times that make sense to your battery.

One feature that people will notice is the clear video technology so items like Hulu.com will look so much better. In addition, it will have more of graphics usage so you wouldn't have to purchase more graphics cards. It will look so good you will want to put your hands all over it!

Now I will not have to look like this when my laptop is on freak out mode. I can just call up IT and they can take care of it!

And if you want to know more go to the Intel Developer Forum Aug 19-21, 2008 in San Francisco. I will be there with my blogging skills!!

I had the pleasure of sitting in on a presentation that Josh Hilliker and Todd Christ for some clients this last week about vPro. As I was sitting there, it dawned on me I didn't realize how good the maintenance is. It really came to me because of Josh's passion and Todd's Knowledge drove it home during this presentation.

The chipset has a lot to do with it. Active Management Technology (AMT) is the featured product. I know I have mentioned a lot about AMT but I never really dove into this subject. It is such a vital part of vPro. This little chipset makes sure that the Operating System (OS) is not jeopardized by outside sources. No matter what state the OS is in, AMT will go in and protect it. AMT would tell the server that its needs help then IT would "cut" most of the connection to only enough to communicate remotely between the server and the client. To make this user friendly on the sever side IDE-Redirection (IDE-R) and Serial over LAN (SOL) are there to help the operator with remotely diagnosing and repairing client systems. To go further on how it has been done Brad Lund did a blog called Using SOL/IDE-R to Diagnose and Repair vPro Clients on the vPro expert center site.

AMT is a force of nature in the chip world. Not only does it help with the protection of the hardware it also makes sure the hardware is up to date, nothing is wrong with it, if there was a problem with it then it would let the server know about it. All of the points are below which tells its main benefits. The name and link is Intel® Active Management Technology.

Features and Benefits

For a business, this is solid reasoning to insure that your information isn't going to be destroyed. That could cost a company millions in time and money if the information is gone. Think for a moment that I was sitting here, writing on a blog and suddenly my computer caught a virus. With out this featured product to protect my computer from hazards then all my work would be gone. That would make for a very unhappy intern. Computers just might fly through the air. Ahhh, but the pleasure of having such a luxury like vPro makes life so much better. I wouldn't have to worry about my work being gone. And I wouldn't feel bad because I wouldn't get anybody else infected with that pesky virus.

There was another thought in all of this, I am really bad at keeping up to date on my hardware and software. Even if it give me the sign saying that I need to update my items, I tend to either ignore them or I just plain forget them (of course I check all the time on my work computer, J). It would be even better for employees and me to have our computers update while we are not at our computers. While the employees are gone, IT can set up a script for vPro to check all of the points and update the licenses, then shut down the computer once again (or restart the computers; however, the company would like to do it). When the employees come back, everything would be as if they never left. That would save companies a lot alone because they are getting more productivity time.

This little piece of equipment is so vital to the pulse of vPro. The three words that come best that I found through my research is that AMT "Discovers, heals, and protects".

Since the previous blog was Proactive Security I feel it is only suiting to discuss the trusted environment. What the trusted environment comes down to is the hardware. Even though trusted environments are virtual, the hardware is needed to feed out any of the potential problems that can occur. Items such as viruses and hackers that can take over the PC and destroy any information we have on there, vPro will be able to, as I said in previous blog, weed out any problems. This is so cool, just think about it, it would be like a six foot, hammering crazy man, finding problems and taking care of them with his deadly hammers. (If I was a bug, I would be scared!)

This trusted environment is very much an issue in today's world. With vPro technology, it will help reduce this vulnerability. The trusted execution technology (TXT) is a new technology that helps within the virtualized computing environments. It will help on getting less software issues to come up. How this works is the TXT work with the virtualization technology for Directed I/O, the hardware will protect or isolate assigned memory to make the virtual machine less prone to attacks.

I came across a case study in my research: a huge hospital by the name of Nottingham University Hospitals (NHS) that has two different primary sites that are 30 min apart. With 6,000 desktops that are there imagine how much they would spend in IT alone. Once this was implemented in the two primary sites, it takes them only 10 minutes to deal with support calls, which would even mean when the client is powered down, instead of two hours. If you would like to read more about this case study go to The Future of IT Support.

Where else would you want a trusted environment to happen? Make sure nobody can get your personal information that you do not want to, but when other physicians and/or staff that need to get to your records, they are able to. If that computer that has all your information is not working properly then other problems can occur and it would be a domino effect. vPro will be able to let the server have access this information and plug it into another client.

Let us look beyond this; how about Financial institutes'? They have a lot of personal information there. If the clients went down at a branch, a main server can come in and fix most software problems from a main site. Less desk side service would mean more money that would be distributed. I like more money also I like having reliability in an area that is holding my money. For some reason I like to retrieve what I put in. Stock markets have many people with computers, which would mean that there could be potential problems. If that happens instead of trying to figure out where that person is, they can fix the problem remotely. The main server that IT works on would make sure that all of the clients are protected from harmful outside sources.

See now don't you wish you always had a big guy with hammers to destroy anything bad!!

Understanding vPro: Chapter 1- What is it?

Understanding vPro: Chapter 2-What is it used for/ why should I use it

Understanding vPro: Chapter 3- Proactive Security- Does it have a tiny guard dog???

vPro radio was live this morning and our topic was on SCE/SCOM and vPro support through the vPro Management Pack. Matt Royer joined us alongside one of the original developers (Nachman Israel) to discuss the use cases, the market focus, and more!


Visit Open Port Radio or Stream this Show Online