Intel vPro Technology

NOTE: If you have not read parts 1 through 3, please read these before reading this part as this is a continuation of the story begun in the previous sections.

Security is only as tight as the weakest link in your environment. More often than not it's internally where the security holes are created, either inadvertently from carelessness or intentionally from a disgruntled or disillusioned employee. The hardware and software security can be top of the line, but if the human factor doesn't adhere to policy, it may not make any difference. This part follows the IT team for Mighty Modern Marketing as they try to track down a security hole where productivity is taken down through the very tools used to defend and manage the network.

The previous articles in this series, along with a foundational understanding of the Intel® vPro™ provisioning sequence, are prerequisite before exploring migration scenarios. This articles provides a brief exploration into migration of Intel® vPro™ clients from one ProvisionServer instance to the next. Common scenarios where this may be applicable include migration from a testing to deployment environment, migrating of the ProvisionServer role to the Altiris environment, and so forth.

The core of the Intel® vPro™ enterprise deployment reference architectures are based upon an understanding of the setup and configuration application (SCA). Providing the important roles of enterprise mode provisioning and configuration, the SCA becomes an integral part of the overall configuration management for Intel® vPro™ systems. In essence, the client management solution suite maintains the configuration at the operating system layer and above, while the SCA maintains the configuration of the Intel® AMT management engine (ME). Without the SCA, remotely maintaining the Intel® ME below or without the operating system presents a difficult challenge.

Terry Cutler has authored this series of Intel vPro articles on Deployment Scenarios.

As noted at the introduction of this series, there is an expectation that the reader is already familiar with the provisioning process of Intel® vPro™ within an Altiris environment. Materials on Altiris Juice, User guides, online or instructor led training, or other sources provide a necessary foundation in understanding the core provisioning process.

This article introduces five models or approaches to deploying, configuring, and using the Intel® vPro™ technology with Altiris Out-of-Band Management. The five base scenarios provide a foundation for custom and advanced deployments that are currently in use, have been tested in the lab, or are being discussed as this article is being drafted.

The articles in this series assume the reader is familiar with the core provisioning, enabling, and configuration of Intel® vPro™ within an Altiris Out-of-Band Management. The topics covered here are advanced deployment situations such as:

• Multiple client facing Altiris Notification Servers
• Mixed environments of Altiris and other client management consoles
• Migration of Intel® vPro™ configurations and deployments to an Altiris environment

Frequently I get asked for my favorite online sites, articles and materials in regards to Intel vPro and the Altiris client management environment. Here's a summary - and I'm open to additions by others.

If you have not read parts 1 and 2, please read these before reading this part as this is a continuation of the story begun previously. Altiris and Intel vPro Use Cases

From the OS level vPro has tools to help quarantine and remediate compromised systems as demonstrated in part 2. This section explores the capabilities at the hardware layer, completely below the OS and any related dependencies. Can the IT staff continue to respond well to threats and avoid outages and threats to the businesses wellbeing? When the gloves come off sometimes even the most secure networks are vulnerable to threats.

This article assumes the reader has a core understanding of provisioning the Intel® vPro™ technology within an Altiris environment. Other articles and materials on Altiris Juice and so forth provide the fundamentals. In exploring endpoint access control (EAC) and 802.1x configuration options, the guidelines provided here should be referenced. Environments deploying Intel® vPro™ may benefit by first using a "Standard" provisioning approach, followed by extending the provision profile to pursue "Advanced" provisioning approaches.

The last few articles have highlighted Altiris specific tools and approaches to initiate Intel® vPro™ provisioning in a post deployment situation. This article will focus primarily on Intel® vPro™ Activator Utility which is the successor to the RCT.exe utility mentioned in a prior article by Joel Smith.