Intel vPro to remote control client pc's

[dalsoth]

Hi All

With a few tips from some Edugeekers i managed to get my head around how to set up a couple of machines to enable me to remote in and control them using vPro KVM technology. We have purchased some Dell machines that use an additional AMD/ATI graphics card with a splitter for classrooms with projectors. The issue i noticed is that the vPro KVM remote control only seems to work with the onboard intel graphics. This is great if you are happy to use an analog VGA onboard graphic solution but rubbish if you tend to use an additional graphics card with a splitter.

Anyone know a way around this or is the whole vPro remote control VNC to the computers a waste of time if you use any non intel embedded graphics card? I noticed this information on the following website that mentioned a possible way to get this to work.

http://www.realvnc.com/products/view...Processors.pdf



It mentions at the top of the document that your OEM may be able to provide a way to switch between the onboard graphics and the 3rd party card when you need to remote control the machine. Anyone know of this or use something like this? It's all well and good being able to get into settings of a machine remotely but the key to this for us is being able to get onto a machine during a bluescreen or similar when we are dealing with remote locations. It would be great to get past this hurdle.

At the moment we are not using any of the enterprise stuff to set any of this up as we have only started to look at it and play with it. I was wondering if anyone had a decent method to get the MEBx settings out to machines without having to spend time physically tapping away at the computer. It is also slightly frustrating that to enable to KVM remote password you need to log into the machine via the intel console tools and set the password. It seems silly that we can't just do this at the vPro MEBx bios type screen when we do the other bits.

At the moment, i am setting up the vPro MEBx settings on a machine then having to start it building via MDT and then scanning the subnet to pick it up on the AMT manageability commander tool to then set up the KVM password remotely. Not the best or convenient way to do things i am sure. Would appreciate any advice or help to tell me where we can do this better.

Thanks!

[SYNACK]

Just getting into the actual use of the vPro stuff now but have been specing it for a while so we now have a decent number of enabled machines. My understanding is that it only works for KVM using the internal GPU as the capture and transmit side is actually integrated into that gpu. Do the dells not come with digital ports too? Our hp 8100 and 8200 series come with vga and display ports, you can get displayport to DVI or HDMI converters quite cheaply and then chuck that into a splitter.

As to the configuration, you can configure them automagicly when they are connected to the network but you need to buy a special SSL cert from verisign to make it all happen.

The easiest way that I could find involved using the intel system managment server thing and having that generate preshared keys, you can then dump them on a USB key and just insert that at boot time to set up the AMT stuff, you still need to run a client install bit in Windows too though.

Check this out for some more details:
Intel® vPro™ Technology Activation for Small and Medium Business