Back in December 2009 I wrote an article about Remote Management of AMT/vPro machine with WinPE and VNC the reason for using VNC is because until AMT 5.0 only text based console redirection is supported, hence AMT 5.0 does only support text based operating systems, so if we wanted to remotely manage a PC to fix a problem we ended up using DOS or Linux based recovery media or a solution as described in the above mentioned article.

The waiting is over! With AMT 6.0 Intel introduces a new feature called KVM Remote Control. The beauty of KVM Remote Control is that now we finally get full remote control functionality over remote systems regardless of the operating system they are running or the state they are in.

So no text-mode limitations anymore ? No, we now have full remote control functionality as we are used to when using remote control tools such as VNC.

Although AMT has many other great features that can help improve client manageability and security, I personally believe that the KVM Remote Control feature is going to be a killer feature. Companies that currently use a 3rd Party (non-free) Remote Control solution are given the opportunity to save software licensing costs for their remote control software which will justify the investment in vPro / AMT 6.0 enabled client hardware devices.

The video below contains a demonstration of the AMT 6.0 KVM Remote Control feature.

Or watch a funny but probably realistic version of the KVM Remote Control feature demo in the video below.

Additional Information:
ROI Analysis – Realizing The Cost Saving Benefits of Activating Intel vPro Technology
Intel AMT 6.0 New Features
What’s new in the all new 2010 Intel Core vPro processor family

I write most of my blog posts at home in the evenings. Usually when I find a new tool I install these first within a virtual machine, this to not mess our family PC or my laptop I use for work. All Virtual Machines run on a HP dc7800 desktop which has Intel vPro support. This PC is installed down in the cellar. To avoid having to go down there to power on  the PC I have created two batch files that allow me to power up and power down the machine remotely using the Intel AMT power management feature.

I have configured AMT in SMB mode as described in the “vPro Setup and Configuration for the dc7800p Business PC with Intel vPro Processor Technology” whitepaper.

The utility I use is called RemoteControl.exe that is included within the Intel AMT Software Development Kit. The RemoteControl.exe and StatusStrings.dll can be found in the .\Intel(R) AMT 5.1 SDK Gold\Windows\Intel_AMT\Bin\ folder.

The command used in the PowerUp.cmd file is as following:

remotecontrol -r -user remoteu -pass P@ssword123 http://192.168.1.73:16992/RemoteControlService < powerup.txt

The command used in the PowerDown.cmd is as following:

remotecontrol -r -user remoteu -pass P@ssword123 http://192.168.1.73:16992/RemoteControlService < powerdown.txt

Note that at the end of the command I pipe the input RemoteControl.exe requires with a text file. The powerup.txt has the following content:

17
343
-1
-1
-1
-1

The powerdown.txt has the following content:

18
343
-1
-1
-1
-1

The first number actually defines what power function is being executed. the following functions are available:

16 (Reset)
17 (PowerUp)
18 (PowerDown)
19 (PowerCycleReset)
33 (SetBootOptions)

Finally, if you do not want to use batch files, you can also access the system remote power management features through the remote management web site. http://<system IP address>:16992