vPro, are you considering or using it?

[SYNACK]

Now that vPro is getting a bit more avalible and mature I was just wondering how many people are aiming to have this on their new machine builds now and in the future.

 

For those that have not heard of it vPro is an Intel managment technology that allows for "out of band" managment of PCs. This means that you can remotely manage and query the machine even if it is in a powered down state (assuming power is attached and network lead is in). This works on the hardware level so you have all of these remote abilities even if the OS is not loaded/broken. Some of the most exciting features are remote control (assuming intel GPU) allowing you to see what is onscreen even if the machine has not booted propperly or is in BIOS. IDE redirection allowing you to map an ISO directly across the network to a downed machine and a pack of other features like reading the BIOS event logs or locking out the USB ports, power-up/down etc.

 

At the moment we are trying to - where practical - get all vPro enabled workstations for both current and future managability. What is everyone elses view?

[Soulfish]

As you say where practical we're trying to get vPro support on all new computers. It's one of the reasons we're currently buying Dell 780's rather than the new 380's. Combining vPro with SCCM looks to give us a very nice set of management tools.

[Duke]

Having rebuilt the majority of 850 PCs this summer it's something I'd seriously consider for the future. With the amount of trouble desktop hardware causes, vPro is more likely to see use than iLOM on servers. It depends what the financial overhead is really - whether I could justify the cost based on time savings of my guys wasting time walking across the site. I've also deployed SCCM this summer so could see the benefits there too.