02-03-2011, 01:00 PM
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1. INTRODUCTION
PCs are essential in today’s enterprises, yet managing a PC fleet can consume a significant portion of IT’s time and budget. Finding ways to keep employees productive while keeping IT management costs low requires a combination of sound IT management practices and technology that maximizes benefits to users and minimizes effort for IT. The latest technology named vPro from Intel helps achieve the enterprises the same.
Intel vPro technology is a set of features built into a PC’s motherboard and other hardware. Intel vPro is not the PC itself, nor is it a single set of management features (such as Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT)) for sys-admins. Intel vPro is a combination of processor technologies, hardware enhancements, management features, and security technologies that allow remote access to the PC -- including monitoring, maintenance, and management -- independently of the state of the operating system (OS) or power state of the PC. Intel vPro is intended to help businesses gain certain maintenance and servicing advantages, security improvements, and cost benefits in information technology (IT) areas. Notebook and desktop PCs with Intel® vPro™ technology enable IT to take advantage of hardware-assisted security and manageability capabilities that enhance their ability to maintain, manage, and protect their business PCs.
2. FEATURES OF INTEL vPRO TECHNOLOGY
2.1 Major Features At a Glance
A vPro PC includes:
• Multi-core, multi-threaded Intel Core 2 Duo or Quad processors.
• Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT).
• Remote configuration technology for AMT, with certificate-based security.
• Wired and wireless (laptop) network connection.
• Intel Trusted Execution Technology (Intel TXT).
• Support for IEEE 802.1x, Cisco Self Defending Network (SDN), and Microsoft Network Access Protection (NAP) in laptops, and support for 802.1x and Cisco SDN in desktop PCs.
• Intel Virtualization Technology, including Intel VT for memory, CPU, and Directed I/O, to support virtualized environments.
• Intel Execute Disable Bit.
• Support for Microsoft Windows Vista.
2.2 Features In Detail
2.2.1 Multi-core, multi-threaded Intel Core 2 Duo or Quad processors
A multi-core processor is a processing system composed of two or more independent cores (or CPUs). The cores are typically integrated onto a single integrated circuit die (known as a chip multiprocessor or CMP), or they may be integrated onto multiple dies in a single chip package.
A dual-core processor contains two cores, and a quad-core processor contains four cores. A multi-core processor implements multiprocessing in a single physical package. Cores in a multi-core device may be coupled together tightly or loosely. For example, cores may or may not share caches, and they may implement message passing or shared memory inter-core communication methods. The amount of performance gained by the use of a multi-core processor is strongly dependent on the software algorithms and implementation. In particular, the possible gains are limited by the fraction of the software that can be "parallelized" to run on multiple cores simultaneously. Many typical applications, however, do not realize such large speedup factors and thus, the parallelization of software is a significant on-going topic of research.
The Intel vPro technology makes use of the immense computing power delivered by the multicore CPUs. The commercially available processors used by the technology are the Inte Core 2 Duo and the Intel Core 2 Quad.
2.2.1 Intel Active Management Technology
Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) is hardware-based technology for remotely managing and securing PCs out-of-band. Or it is the set of management and security features built into vPro PCs and which are intended to make it easier for a sys-admin to monitor, maintain, secure, and service PCs. Intel AMT is hardware and firmware technology that builds certain functionalities into business PCs in order to make the PCs easier and less expensive for businesses to monitor, maintain, update, upgrade, and repair. Intel AMT is part of the Intel Management Engine, which is built into PCs with Intel vPro technology. Intel AMT is designed into a secondary processor located on the motherboard.
AMT is not intended to be used by itself; it is intended to be used with a software management application. It gives a management application (and thus, the sys-admin who uses it) better access to the PC down the wire, in order to remotely and securely do tasks that are difficult or sometimes impossible when working on a PC that does not have remote functionalities built into it.
2.2.2.1 Intel AMT features:
Intel AMT includes hardware-based remote management features, security features, power-management features, and remote-configuration features. The features allow an IT tech to access an AMT PC when traditional techniques and methods to manage the PC are not available.
Access to the Intel AMT features relies on a hardware-based OOB communication channel. Because the channel operates below the OS level, the channel is independent of the state of the OS (present, missing, corrupted, down). The communication channel is also independent of the PC’s power state, the presence of a management agent, and the state of many hardware components (such as hard disk drives and memory).
Along with the communication channel, most AMT features are available OOB, regardless of PC power state. Other features are available after the PC is powered up (such as console redirection via serial over LAN (SOL), agent presence checking, and network traffic filtering). Because AMT has a remote power-up feature, a sys-admin can combine the OOB communication with the remote power-up feature and access PCs that were powered off at the start of the maintenance or service cycle.
