Intel SCS query

[Darin]

All,

I have recently set up an Intel SCS 5.0.0.92 server and have a number of questions which I hope others will know the answers too! -

1. I have been provisioning my PCs using the USB key pair method and I understand that once this is done you then have to manually add the PC information into the database (FQDN, UUID etc). I have been trying to automate this process using the RCT tool but this only works if you log into the PC. Running it from active directory startup scripts gives a "FQDN attempted to assume another platforms identity" error!? Has anyone else been able to automate this process? You certainly used to be able to do it using the Intel Commander software, once provisioned with a USB key, the PCs just appeared!

2. As mentioned above I used to use Intel Commander which means that a lot of my PCs are already commissioned. Is there any way to import them into Intel SCS?

I am very much a newbie with SCS so any help will be greatfully recieved.

Thanks,

Darin

[Andrew_S_Intel2]

Darin,

I'll answer each of your questions in turn. The first is kind of complicated though.

1. First, if you're using the USB key pair methodto setup the systems for provisioning, that is enough to start the AMT systems sending hello packets to ProvisionServer (you can read about this on page 104 of the installation guide). If ProvisionServer is a pingable address in your environment, and resolves to the IP address of the SCS server, the hello packets from the AMT systems should get to SCS automatically. At that point, the system would show up in SCS without an FQDN, and you could manually add the FQDN of the system and select the profile to use to complete the provisioning. If you knew in advance which UUID corresponded to the FQDN you wanted to assign, you could use the SCS scripting functionality to enter in UUID's, FQDN's, and profiles to use in advance, and then SCS would automatically complete the provisioning as soon as the hello packet for that AMT system was received.

If ProvisionServer does not resolve to the IP of the SCS server, matters become a little more complicated. One option is that you can use the Activator to send the hello packet (and specify the FQDN/IP address of the SCS server), I'll talk more on this below. Another is that you can use the USBFile utility that is part of the SDK to generate a USBFile that includes a full domain path, which will then be appended to ProvisionServer in the hello packets.

As for using RCT (which I think is the same thing as the Activator that's part of the SCS package, please correct me if that's not the case), I'll have to look into options on automating. I'm fairly certain it's possible, but I'll need to ask some other team members here. This can also be used to include the IP address/FQDN to send the hello packet to, as mentioned above.

2. This one is easier to answer (although probably not with the answer you would like). Since the DTK and the Commander were intended for development efforts, and not really for production environments, there isn't a mechanism for transfering the entries in Commander into SCS.

[Darin]

Andrew,

Thank you vey much for replying to my post.

Firstly, the ProvisionServer is a pingable address in our infrastructure, and indeed, the systems are showing up in SCS without a FQDN (just the UUID). The problem is matching the UUID to a FQDN. I dont know of any tools that will programatically gather the UUID of systems for me.
Before, when I used the Commander software, when I provisioned a system using the USB key pair, it would automatically provision itself, so the SCS seems like a step back in that respect.

For point 2, are you saying that the only way to import systems that were provisioned with Commander, would be to reset AMT to factory defaults and start again?

Thanks for your help,

Darin

[RBens2]

Hi Darin,

From my experience with the SCS, the answer to your question is, yes. You do have to unconfigure your systems in order to get the SCS to recognize them. The usage model envisioned with the SCS expected it to be the only means in an enterprise to provision systems, so it doesn't have the capability to import in a list of systems that have already been configured. It seems a bit short-sighted to me, but that does seem to be how it works.

Regards,

Roger