What is your vision to deploying Intel vPro?

As you prepare to implement Intel vPro technology, or perhaps you have already enabled the technology - what are your plans to actually utilize it?

One of the most common production usages is simply reliable remote power-on of systems.

Have you looked at the IDE-Redirection capability?

A more involved and interesting use case is the IDE-Redirection. At the core, this enables overriding the default BIOS boot order. The administrator is able to point to a different local or remote boot device, boot image (ISO or IMG), or force a PXE-boot.

Related to the IDE-Redirection is Serial-over-LAN (SoL). Serial-over-LAN provides two key capabilities

1. Redirection of ANSI or VT100 consoles, helpful for pre-boot errors and non-GUI interfaces
2. The Windows SoL device driver uses a COM port to redirect allowed traffic (take a look at your Windows Device Manager, under the COM\LPT ports) - see the bottom of this article for an interesting usage idea...

Sharing ideas how IDE-Redirection is being used in production

Okay - now let's discuss some real world scenarios and associated challenges. An administrator initiates an IDE-Redirection to run some diagnostic utilities from a bootable image utility disk. If the utility is VT100/ANSI console compliant - great. However, many recovery utilities are GUI based (i.e. Microsoft ERD).

Here's a few hints to how real-world customers and deployments are combining tools and capabilities to take advantage of IDE-Redirection and Serial-over-LAN

• Create a bootable ISO from an existing Ghost boot disk to establish the network connection (client to Ghost server) and connect into a multicast imaging session. In one instance, this approach saves at least an hour in "sneaker net" time, since the technician doesn't need to visit the desk to start the session. Since the bootable image is "hands-off" no console interface via SoL is required for the administrator.
• Embedding a WinPE hidden partition on the drive (or using a bootable ISO WinPE or BartPE image) which includes a remote console client (i.e. PC Anywhere, VNC, LANDesk remote desktop, Microsoft remote console, etc). If bootable ISO with the full WinPE image using IDE-Redirect - easier to change\update the ISO. If embedded\hidden partition, the bootable ISO for IDE-Redirection uses grub (Grand Unified BootLoader - http://www.gnu.org/software/grub) which can be viewed via Serial-over-LAN. Either approach provides a GUI interface to run diagnostic utilities or other events on the client. A variation is to use a ThinStation bootable ISO.
• If you're Windows XP boot files or configuration becomes corrupted, take a look at http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-1733. Basically, with a boot recovery disk containing the NTLDR, Boot.ini, and NTDetect.com. This will allow you to boot the system and restore.

Concluding thoughts... and teaser for future post

The above ideas are just a sampling of how customers are using the IDE-Redirection functionality of Intel vPro in an Altiris Client Management environment. Interested if you have more ideas.

One last thought - to give you a glance of what is possible using the Windows Serial-over-LAN driver - take a look at http://communities.intel.com/openport/blogs/proexpert/2008/09/26/oob-gui-access-using-sol-and-tcp-redirection