Tuesday 4 September 2012

How to create your very own application to manage your vPro clients

Hi all,

how would you like to create your own application to leverage the features available within the vPro Technology? 

It could look like this: 



Everything you need to know can be found on this Intel website. I haven't reinvented the wheel. Just added my own flavour to Intel's design. 

My design is the same as the video clip provided by Intel except, I call two application to remote control the systems.

Below are the steps you can use to recreate my application.

1. Download IntelvProPowerShellModuleAndEditor-3.2.1.zip from this Intel website. 

2. Install the Power Shell models which are located within IntelvProModule-3.2.1 folder.

3. Load the Intel PowerShell invoke-AMTGUI Editor to build your console. This video demonstration will give you the details to create you desired controls. In my example, I have included the following controls:

  • 2 x Images 
  • 1 x Computer Name Input Box 
  • 1 x Credential Input Box
  • 1 x vPro Command List Box
  • 1 x Output Window
  • 2 x Generic Buttons. (Open KVM View and Open VNC Plus. Step 4)

5.  I have also changed the MenuVisible to False so it doesn't display the top menu and renamed the application to BamITS Intel PowerShell Control.  




  4. My console also has two generic buttons. These buttons call the applications I use to remote control the VNC server within the chip sets. KVMView (Free) and VNC Viewer Plus. The computer name is passed-through. 

KVMView is free and is provided by Intel as an add-on for SCCM. It provides hardware based Keyboard Video Mouse Connections for Intel(r) vPro(tm) Processor Technology based systems. You can download it from here. Don't worry if you don't have SCCM. It doesn't require it  

VNC Viewer Plus is not free. Last time I checked it was under $100. In my opinion the only difference is the look and feel. It is good to have both for troubleshooting. You can download it from here.

   4.1. Install both applications.

   4.2. Create a folder in the root directory called IntelKvmControl. Within that folder create two folders. KVMView and RealVNC.



   4.3. Copy the contents from C:\Program Files\Intel Corporation\Intel Core vPro processor add-on for System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to C:\IntelKvmControl\KVMView.



    4.4. Copy the contents from C:\Program Files (x86)\RealVNC\VNCViewerPlus to C:\IntelKvmControl\RealVNC.

   4.5. For the generic button Open KVM View put the following command in CmdLineToRun C:\IntelKvmControl\KVMView\KVMView.exe -host $computername

  4.6. For the generic button Open VNC Plus put the following command in CmdLinToRun: C:\IntelKvmControl\RealVNC\vncviewerplus.exe $computername 

5. Save it to C:\IntelKvmControl. Call it something like vProControl.xml

6. Now all we need to do is run the application within a powershell console. I decided to create a powershell script to do this. The script has the following commands. You will need to change blair.xml to your xml file you created

Import-Module IntelvPro
Invoke-AMTGUI -xmlConfig C:\IntelKvmControl\Blair.XML





Run the powershell script you created and you should see your application appear.

Let me know if you have any issues.

Regards,

Blair


3 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for your blogs. I am currently in the process of starting to provision a suite of vpro machines, and have tried to do this using SCCM and the vPro plugin, but this has proved very troublesome. I found recently the new documents which use Intel SCS and SCCM together, this and your blogs are making it clear how to start on this new road, and hopefully I will be able to get it resolved and working soon. I have been working on the project for quite some time so would dearly love to be able to put it to bed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey Katrina,

      I've spoken to my contact at Intel and we might be able to assist you. touch base with me offline via email.

      Regards,

      Blair

      Delete
  2. Hey Katrina,

    Very happy to help. If you have any questions or need any help say the word.

    ReplyDelete