vPro/CentrinoPro & Manageability

Good Day Slashdot community... My name is Josh, I'd like to introduce Mike, Jeff & Chris. For the next 2 weeks we'll be online to discuss more about Intel's business clients - vPro, previously launched and Centrino Pro, which launches soon. As we're sure you've heard, one of our key features is Intel Active Management Technology which an IT shop can really apply to some of the seemingly intractable management and security problems that drive us nuts. Stuff like patching powered-down systems during off-hours, or remotely booting a hard-down PC. In our view, the key is hardware. As long as your management and security is a slave to the OS, you are stuck if the system is off or the OS is down. Hardware support opens up a bunch of possibilities.

One of the key items that we believe is important is how you integrate your vPro/CPro machines into your environment. We are experienced in our own Integration and we are interested in your questions on this topic. Over the last few months we have been working on integrating these platforms into our IT shop and the experience has been valuable to see all the integration points & how we can really leverage a vPro/CPro machine, whether in an Innovation centre, to a Training Room.

We wanted to take this opportunity to answer any questions you have around vPro or Centrino Pro. Or if not.. Here are a few questions that we would be interested in your response:

• Manageability, while this phrase is the latest buzz word for any IT professional, what do you think that means for your IT shop?
• Have the patch deployment and system inventory problems been largely solved?
• Integration, Have you integrated vPro systems on your infrastructure? How deep of an integration? How did it go?
• What would you like to see added to the manageabilty your clients? What could we do in hardware that you can't get in software?

We hope to hear from you, we will be responding daily during the 2 weeks.

What can hardware do that software can't?

Turning machines on when they're off sounds a bit like Wake on Lan. Cutting a machine off from the rest of the network sounds kind of like a firewall.
Remote diagnostics is pretty neat, but again it can be done in software, and why would you need remote diagnostics if things were so dire that software diagnostics couldn't run?

I think the most important manageability concerns are met with software, and get the feeling that vPro is one of those technologies that hopes to get adopted by dazzling managers with buzzwords like manageability.

But then again, I'm a Slashdot guy and we're negative about everything. :-)

AMT Zero-touch configuration

I am interested in the zero touch configuration. I'm currently designing a server side windows service that will wait for clients with AMT device to connect. When an AMT device is detected it will automatically configure the device. My question is, is zero touch configuration possible even if [Computer Host Name] and [Provisioning Server IP address] are not initially set in the AMT device (in Enterprise mode)? Can AMT broadcast the "hello" message instead of just directing it to a provisioning server?

Centrino Pro

Will Centrino Pro fully support AMT. Will an application that works with VPro AMT (for example DTK) will work with a Centrino Pro NoteBook? Neo

Integration of vPro & CentrinoPro

Good afternoon.. I would like to understand who has already integrated a vPro or CentrinoPro into their production environment. I'm definitely interested to hear more and gather input.. Josh H

Mac Support?

We are strongly considering deploying Macs in a multiboot configuration once Leopard is released and BootCamp is no longer considered beta software. With this in mind, are you able to discuss whether there are plans to implement vPro support in Apple hardware and for OS X? I'm hoping that as the intel-based mac platform matures, we'll see a lot more cross-platform management and deployment technologies and, with luck, vPro will be among the first out the gate. Thanks in advance for any response you can provide.

Bios replaced by EFI (UEFI) ?

Santa Rosa/Centrino Pro was supposed to be the end of the Bios and Intel annouced it would start using UEFI (unified extensible firmware interface) instead. As I found no mentioning anymore but only Bios mentioned: Has UEFI now found its way into the new platforms or not? Thanks.

vPro Launched

Hi I will like to know when was VPro technology officially launched to the market supporting AMT Thanks

Software capability in Hardware?

What other options that are achieved through software today for manageability would you like to see in hardware?