Installing Site System Roles : Out of Band Service Point

The out of band service point is the site system role that serves as the management interface between Configuration Manager and client systems that are operating with Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT) vPro chipset, a technology available in workstation-class systems.

Intel is the first hardware vendor to provide direct hardware interactions to leverage Windows Remote Management capabilities. These capabilities include remote boot control, forced PXE boots, remote network boots, and direct inspection of the hardware inventory and power state. AMT is even able to wake a machine from sleep state if needed! A goal of this technology is to empower full system management without the expense of desktop visits. These capabilities become very attractive when addressing geographically dispersed branch offices where there is little or no support staff to physically remediate workstations. Since Configuration Manager is the world-class systems management suite, the inclusion of AMT as a capability just makes sense.

Before a system is able to be managed, it must be provisioned. In Configuration Manager 2007, a provisioning process known as out-of-band provision was supported, a process that allowed a workstation to be configured even without an installed operating system. Configuration Manager 2012 R2 supports in-band provisioning only—meaning that a Configuration Manager 2012 R2 client needs to be installed and assigned to a site. Provisioning also requires the use of certificates. The out of band service point is the focus of activity during provisioning because it connects to and interacts with AMT-capable systems.

Setting up Configuration Manager/AMT integration and management requires several steps. One of the first steps in the process is to install an out of band service point. One out of band service point will be needed at each primary site that provides AMT management. If the role has not yet been added, you will need to select it in the Add Site System Roles Wizard.

1. Choose the site where the out of band service point will be located, and select the service point in the Add Site System Roles Wizard.
2. Click Next to proceed to the AMT Service Point page of the wizard, shown in Figure 

3. On the AMT Service Point page, configure the number of retry attempts that should be made, along with the delay between retries, when attempting to connect to an unresponsive AMT system.

You can also specify the maximum number of transmission threads between the out of band service point and AMT-equipped systems on this page. If AMT is heavily utilized, it may be appropriate to change the default settings. If you make changes, however, take care to ensure the performance of the host system is not adversely affected.

The transmission offset is the last setting on this page and defines how long before any scheduled activity, such as scheduled software distribution, an AMT system wake-up command should be sent. This is an important feature of AMT and should be considered along with Configuration Manager Wake On LAN capabilities.

4. Adjust configurations as needed, and click Next to proceed to the AMT Provisioning Certificate page, shown in Figure

5. On the AMT Provisioning Certificate page, browse to the provisioning certificate that will be used and import it.
A provisioning certificate will be used for validation when connecting to AMT-enabled systems and initializing the provisioning process.

6. Choose whether to enable CRL checking for the AMT provisioning certificate, and then click Next.

Configuration Manager 2012 R2 out of band service points require that all site servers must
be members of a Windows 2003 or higher Active Directory domain.