![]() ![]() You can poll asset information from these systems to see what hardware they contain or what software is installed. Picture an interface with a list of properly grouped PCs, the ability to click a single button and reboot or remote control a computer. Using software such as Altiris or Microsoft’s System Center suite gives you the best overview of the devices in your care. vPro really shines when you pair it with software-based management systems to provide a single unified interface controlling all aspects of your desktop environments. Just because you can manage your fleet of vPro systems without full-blown desktop management software does not mean that you should. Intel has made all of this accessible via either the vPro APIs or a vPro system’s built-in management web site interface for an additional hardware cost of less than $50 for the average desktop. What is even more impressive is that it can all be accessed without expensive third-party management software. This is an impressive array of remote management features for any desktop. Every 30 seconds, a new key is randomly generated, to be used along with passwords as a form of two-factor authentication to access online resources that require additional security. The last important feature on the checklist is Intel’s Identity Protection Technology, a hardware implementation of a one-time key. The consumerisation of IT starts to look a lot less daunting when you can tie this level of security to the device. Given Intel’s ambitions to take on ARM on its own turf, this has profound implications for embedded, cellular and tablet markets. Systems can be configured to report their location on a regular basis, as a one-time item, or continuously if suspected stolen. If the cellular modem contains a GPS radio, then vPro can scrape the location information and send that back to home base. It can all be accessed without expensive third-party software The system can also be locked if there are too many invalid login attempts, or the system hasn’t "called home" within the specified time. Notebooks so equipped can be sent a "poison pill" SMS message, which locks the notebook into an unusable state (you can customise the lock message). If your notebook happens to have a cellular modem (or dongle), it can be controlled in a manner similar to mobile device management for smartphones. Newer versions bring anti-theft technologies to the table for mobile devices. Expect this feature to gain a lot more importance when IPv6 starts to take off. There is a hardware firewall which allows you to create various packet filters to restrict dangerous traffic, or to "whitelist" certain addresses with which you want to allow communication. Add-in network cards, even those made by Intel, cannot be controlled in this fashion. If you suspect that you are dealing with an infected system, you can block or throttle all network traffic to and from the wired or wireless interfaces. Robust network features are naturally included. This is incredibly powerful, so Intel has made sure that as many security features as possible are built into the system to prevent its misuse. VPro enables you to remotely control every aspect of your desktop, eliminating the need for deskside assistance for anything other than outright hardware failure. This can be done out-of-band, on a schedule as per various alerts and even if your systems are powered down. Using established third-party desktop management software, PowerShell or custom scripts and the vPro API, a complete inventory of all vPro systems on your network can be quickly created. VPro is capable of serving up a complete hardware inventory, and supports network discoverability. ![]() It is generally used by third-party software vendors to store information such as version numbers to ensure that software assets can be tracked. This is a small amount (192kb) of flash memory that is part of AMT and can be read or written to even when the PC is off. Worth a mention too is the Third Party Data Store. Loading Windows 7 up on a computer by mounting an iso across a VPN from halfway around the world isn’t fast, but it works and it works well. This means you can remotely load an operating system or use diagnostic tools without user intervention. Distance no objectĪ feature with far-reaching support implications is the ability to mount ISO files remotely. This is useful for example when a frozen operating system is not accepting keyboard inputs. ![]() VPro supports remotely power management, the ability to turn a computer on or off or reboot it independently of KVM keyboard or user input. ![]()
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