Manageability Talk: Lance Atencio Discussed Alarm Clock Feature of Intel AMT SDK 5.1

By Ajay Mungara (Intel) (111 posts) on May 13, 2009 at 11:41 am

Episode 1 of Manageability Talk was broadcast on May 13, 2009 hosted by Ajay Mungara and Gael Holmes.

First let me introduce the show. Gael Holmes and I will be hosting a regular Manageability Show. In this show we plan to talk to technical experts about tools, code, tips, features and techniques that will help you develop manageability and security applications for Intel vPro technology with Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT). We plan to host this show (~15mins long) on a bi-weekly schedule and we are still working out the exact time and day that works best for the show. In the very near future we are also planning to take advantage of some of the Video capabilities on ISN. And, we are also planning on listener question shows.

In this show, I talked about a few highlights on the community including the availability of the new Intel AMT trainings - Introduction to Intel AMT and How to develop applications for Intel AMT? . I also talked about the launch of a new site called IdeaZone (I will be writing a detailed blog post on this launch shortly).

Then Gael Holmes and I talked to Lance Atencio about the new Alarm Clock Feature of Intel AMT SDK 5.1. Lance answered some questions related to this feature.

Q: Can you tell us about the Alarm Clock feature?

A: Alarm Clock is a relatively new feature that came out earlier this year. It provides a capability to remotely schedule systems to wake up at a specified time so that they can perform scheduled tasks. At the time of the wake up you need a network connection and can wake up

Q: What kind of business problem does this feature solve?

A: Ability to perform management tasks more efficient. Patch management, virus scan at scheduled times performed at any power state. So, essentially you can bring the system up from OFF state, perform the task and shut down the system. Thus you don't have to keep the systems ON just to run scheudled tasks. This can be good energy saving policy.

Q: What kind of business scenarios can you think of that can take advantage of this feature?

A: Backup, patch management, Virus scans, etc.

What version of the Intel AMT SDK is required to support Alarm Clock feature?

A: Supported in SDK 5.1. Currently only on the desktops, but there are plans in the future to support this capability on laptops as well.

Q: Does Intel AMT also have a Snooze feature that goes along with Alarm Clock?

A: ISVs can implement this feature. Probably a good new feature request.

Q: What kind of developer resources are available on the community to find out more about this features?

A: Intel AMT SDK has a lot of documentation, Lance recently hosted a webinar where he disucssed this feature in more detail, lance is also writing a white paper to discuss alarm clock feature in more detail (the white paper will be published on the manageability community).

Q: Is this feature implemented in the DTK?

A: No, not currently supported in DTK.

In our next Manageability Talk on May 20th we'll be talking with Intel Application Engineer Ajith Illendulla about another Intel AMT feature "Fast Call for Help". If you would us to ask Ajith any question related to "fast call for help" please leave a comment w/t your question on this blog post. thank you.