Provisioning Intel vPro devices

To enable vPro provisioning in a Ivantienvironment, simply enter a password in the Intel vPro general configuration dialog box. In most cases, this is all that is required to provision and manage all vPro machines on your network.

The Intel vPro general configuration dialog box lets you enter and change the password used with the default vPro administrator account. This password is applied to all new Intel vPro devices during the provisioning process. You can also change this password on all currently managed Intel vPro devices. If a vPro password has been previously set on a device not managed by the current Core, the password will not be changed. The device will not be provisioned until the local password matches the password on the Intel vPro general configuration dialog box or the machine has been Full Unprovisioned in the ME BIOS.

NOTE: Intel vPro requires the use of a strong password to enable secure communications. Passwords should meet these requirements.

Provisioning methods

There are three main methods available for provisioning vPro.

  1. Host Based provisioning – zero-touch (version 6.2 and above)
  2. Remote provisioning – zero-touch (version 2.3 and above)
  3. Options available via the Ctrl-P menu on the vPro machine – one-touch
    • Provisioning ID / Provisioning Pass phrase (PID/PPS)
    • Manual vPro enablement via firmware

The first two options are zero-touch. This means provisioning can be accomplished through the network and physical access to the device is not required. The third method requires someone to visit each device to enable vPro options using a setup utility. This utility is accessed at boot time before the OS is loaded.

NOTE: The only time you should have to use the third option is if you have older vPro devices (pre 6.2) and you cannot implement the certificate infrastructure required for remote configuration.

Supported vPro versions

Ivanti provides support for provisioning and management of vPro version 2.3 up to the latest version (currently 9.x). Both Client Control Mode and Admin Control Mode are supported in version 6.2 and later.

The following graphic outlines the type of provisioning available for each version of vPro.

NOTE: PID/PPS is no longer available in version 9. Version 9 also requires a new API – WS-MAN. Hello Packets are also phased out beginning with version 6.2.