Client Management Suite

So word is 7.5 eliminates OOB and you have to use the Intel SCS server alone now.

So I have a few questions regarding this. 

Has anyone gone down this road already?

Any helpful documentation regarding performing the upgrade for SCS?

Do we have the ability to still control the power of a machine using the vpro features in Altiris after this?

Any insight that can be provided regardign this would be helpful.

Not necessarily an answer but since other people will be looking here for 7.5 compatibility issues:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO92275

Is the removal of OOB Management permanent moving forward? If so, does anyone know the reasoning behind the decision to take away such a useful tool?

To me it appears that VNC will now be the only true remote management tool as it integrates with Intel's KVM Remote function while PCAnywhere does not.

I was stated on the 7.5 kickoff webinar today that it was being removed because Symantec and Intel's release cycles couldn't line up.

I'd recommend finding the recording of today's webinar to hear their own words.  I suspect that more explanation will come out sometime soon about this decision.

My information is the same. Intel were updating their product to the point where it couldnt reasonably be kept in line with Symantec's. I've also heard that others are using these tools from their native vendors but I don't have names to share. There are some advantages to this for support purposes though I think it's a better move for the customer to have an up to date tool supported directly by the vendor than something that is integrated but behind the release curve. I cannot say I have been involved in any of the decisions though, these are my own opinions.

I concur with HighTower this is also what I heard during the call.

Ok but here is my question?

Lets say I want to schedule a power routine using vPro can Altiris 7.5 still do this?  As this is something that is a huge benefit.  Power up a box using vPro perform the maintenance on the pc and power it down.

Remote control from the altiris console was also nice but if I had to go somewhere else for this I could survive.  My main concern is the power function integration.

Then the other question is for an environment that is fully OOB integrated today with Altiris how do we upgrade SCS and altiris and then work?  Do I have to then get into SCS and start from scratch with the setup?  Some information here would be great.

Real Time System manager is still there with power features for Intel/ASF/Dash as far as I remember but i'm doing this from memory rather than checking the new documentation (which we both should do!). Need 30 minutes to check since I don't have virtual machines with that capability in my VM lab. 

To confirm - RTSM is still there, and so are power state changes.

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=DOC5709

pg 12 

We setup our SCS 8.1 server not long ago. We used a managed delivery policy to configure each of our clients. Once you've gotten the certificate for the SCS everything else is pretty straight forward as far as configuration. 

The Intel 8.1 SCS 8.1 User Guide and Deployment Guides both proved to be very helpful in getting everythingn setup. 

As far as Altiris integration for commands.. I really haven't done much of it. I use vnc viewer plus or powershell to handle most of the heavy lifting when it comes to that.