vPro and NS

[idata]

Hello -

I am leading up a project to implement vPro in our environment. Before we go ahead the person who is our Notification Server admin would like to know how vPro interacts with NS. Specifically, how do the pc's being managed with vPro check in and is there a possibility that there could be duplicates on the NS Server.

Thank you,

Ann

[Terry_C_Intel]

Hi Ann - Great question.

First - are you or your Altiris Notification Server admin familiar with the online reference\checklist on vPro Expert Center? (http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-2032) That online reference points to several points of consideration with reference to other online documentation... especially the Intel section of Altiris Juice (http://juice.altiris.com/intel)

From a vPro provisioning perspective - the optimal situation is for client systems to have the Altiris agent installed and pointed to a target Altiris NS server. This creates the computer object. Using the Altiris OOB Discovery - a small process which can be enabled for the agent - this will update the Inv_OOB_Capability portion of the existing computer object. More information is available at http://juice.altiris.com/node/4638

If you provision a vPro client first - before the Altiris agent or Network Discovery methods have been used to create the computer object within the Altiris NS - you may run into a situation where duplicate objects exist. Basically, the provisioning engine (Intel SCS with service process AMTconfig) provisioned the vPro system. The resource synchronization process captured this and updated the Altiris CMDB... which didn't find an existing computer object, so it created one. Later on - you install the Altiris agent on the client, which registers into the Altiris NSserver and creates a second object. I have seen this happen. What is supposed to happen next is at the next interval of the resource synchronization process - if the option is applied - the process will recognize duplicate computer objects in the Altiris CMDB and take action to delete one of them. Unfortunately - sometimes the wrong object gets deleted (i.e. the object with computer inventory captured by the Altiris agent)... this is not favorable. Altiris support and product teams are aware of this issue.... last time I saw it occur was over a year ago.

There is more to share and review only - take a look at the resources linked and noted above.

Hope that helps

- TC