About Out of Band Management

Applies To: System Center Configuration Manager 2007, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2

You can use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to manage computers that have the Intel vPro chip set and Intel Active Management technology (Intel AMT) firmware versions 3.2.1 or later.

Out of band management allows an administrator to connect to the computer’s management controller while the computer is powered on or off, in sleep mode, or hibernating. Because this system is outside of the standard client-agent model that is provided by Configuration Manager, greater basic control is available for administrators. Programmatically, accessing out of band management is split into two separate sections, running commands and reading information.

Running Out of Band Management Commands

To run an out of band management action on a computer or on a collection of computers, use the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) class SMS_Collection. You can run actions on computers in a specific SMS_Collection class or on a set of individually distinguished computers. Before actions can run on a collection, the collection must have the AMTAutoProvisionEnabled property set to true on the associated SMS_CollectionSettings. To run an action on a set of computers, you must know the resource id of the machine accounts.

Reading Out of Band Management Information

To read the state of a computer, regarding its out of band management state, you must use a Configuration Manager Win32 dynamic-link library (DLL). This DLL is in the <ConfigMgrInstallPath>\adminui\bin\i386 directory and named amtwsmanutil.dll.

See Also

Concepts

System Center Configuration Manager Software Development Kit