New SDK, Articles, Site Changes for Manageability Community

Has a month gone by already? I thought it was time for another blog. I’m checking in to let you know what’s new and to tell you about some changes that are in progress for our Manageability Community.

First, what’s new since I became your community manager?

The Remote Encryption Management SDK was released at the start of the Intel Developer Forum. Remote Encryption Management allows computers with Intel® vPro™ Processor Technology and encrypted hard drives to be managed out-of-band.

To learn more about Remote Encryption Management and download the SDK, click the following:

• Remote Encryption Management Software Development Kit Download page
• Andy Schiestl’s Blog
• Tim Duncan’s Video Demo (filmed at IDF)

“Developing WS-Management Solutions for Intel® Active Management Technology” was written by Intel’s Randy Templeton and released just this week. This article describes how to develop flexible WS Management-based solutions for Intel® Active Management Technology using the .NET development environment. Basic ingredients and building blocks of a WSMan-based solution are presented along with coding samples.

As part of my spin up I’m naturally spending a lot of time with Intel engineers and other members of our community who are experts on manageability technology including Intel® Active Management Technology (AMT) and Intel® vPro™ Processor. And while I will continue to learn more I first came to the conclusion that I make some changes on the site. The first of these are:

• On the Manageability home page I removed the flash banner and replaced it with some to-the-point links and set them off with a blue box. This area is what I call the “sweet spot” of the page as I believe it should contain items you immediately look for when you arrive in our community, or when you return and want to start where you left off. If you would like to see additional links here let me know and I’ll add them.
• I added the book section and highlighted the newest offering: Active Management Technology Demystified: Unleashing the power of Intel® vPro™ Technology, authored by Intel employees Arvind Kumar, Purushottam Goel and Ylian Saint-Hilare. If you know of additional books and publications send the info to me and I’ll see where it fits and post it.
• I created a tag cloud at the bottom of the page, the links of which take you to pages covering the subjects that are listed.

Our goal is make this an ever-changing, user-friendly site that reflects us. We want you to find what you need as quickly as possible and quickly see what’s new in order to accomplish your work. As we continue to modify the site we will retain what works and improve where we can. More changes are coming and the evolution will be gradual and continuing.

Many of the changes will be a result of your contributions so it is imperative that you share your questions, answers, opinions and ideas.

I hold a content meeting each week to find out what’s going on and brainstorm ideas for articles and features. Each month we will invite a Community Member or two, outside of Intel, to attend this meeting to represent the Manageability Community at large. Let me know if you are interested and we’ll arrange for you to attend by phone.

We want to hear from you so join our conversation!

Kathy

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntelBlogs/~3/An2foZFEwoo/

Remote Encryption Management, what is it and what does the SDK do?

So, there&aposs a new SDK available on the ISN Manageability site, and it frankly needs some explanation. Plus just some description on what Remote Encryption Management is, since it hasn��t been discussed previously.

To sum up in a sentence, Remote Encryption Management supports the ability to unlock an encrypted hard drive through vPro. This refers to both software encrypted solution (where the OS and a pre-boot authentication are involved), or FDE encrypted hard drives where the encryption is handled at the hard drive level. This helps to solve a previous conflict if someone wanted to use both encrypted hard drives and vPro to wake up and patch a system when a user wasn��t present. Previously the systems had to be left unlocked overnight, or a user had to be physically present to unlock the hard drive. Now, the credentials to unlock the systems can be passed to the system to unlock it from remotely, and allow the patching process to continue. This also enables some other use cases remotely out of band, such as securely erasing the hard drive once the machine is no longer in use to ensure that sensitive data is removed.

The SDK contains both an example console that shows how the functionality could be integrated into an existing encryption solution, and an ISO file that can be remotely booted using the IDE-R functionality to unlock the systems. It also includes the source for both of these components, to make the integration task into an existing solution easier. If the existing encryption solution already has a pre-boot authentication environment, the key component of the ISO (the ATAoverLAN bridge) can be integrated into the pre-boot authentication environment. Integration into a pre-boot authentication environment is actually a better performing solution, since the ISO image does not need to be loaded over the network before the hard drive can be unlocked.

One of the things that is interesting about this project is that since its software based, it can work with the existing vPro platforms that were released last year. This functionality is supported on full vPro systems (not Standard Manageability systems) in the current generation of AMT 4 and AMT 5 systems, as well as the next vPro generation that releases next year.

Even if someone doesn��t have an existing encryption solution to integrate this functionality into, the SDK still might be of interest. I mentioned the ISO previously, it&aposs a Linux based iso image that&aposs used through IDE-R. In addition to the ISO image itself, the source for that ISO file is provided. This iso is very compact (it��s approximately 2.5 MB), and could potentially be used for other out of band functionality.

Note that this conversation is still pretty high level and I��ve papered over some details that would be involved. If anything I��ve talked about sounds interesting, I��d recommend downloading the Remote Encryption Management SDK here: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/download-the-latest-version-of-Remote-Encryption-ManagementSDK/ and look at the more detailed content.

There��s also a demo video of the functionality being used here: http://software.intel.com/en-us/videos/amt-remote-encryption-management-demo/

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntelBlogs/~3/2j_JUuSBCkM/

Seagate First To Ship Enterprise-Class Self-Encrypting Drives To VARs And System Builders Worldwide

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. – September 22, 2009 -

Seagate’s enterprise Self-Encrypting Drives (SED). Strong enough for national security… Simple enough for the one-man IT shop.

Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) today announced worldwide availability of the Seagate Secure™ Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) option across its portfolio of enterprise-class hard drives. Products with the Seagate Secure option include: Savvio™ 15K.2, Savvio 10K.3, Constellation™ and Cheetah™ 15K.7 drives.

These enterprise-class products are an extension of Seagate’s first-to-market leadership with Seagate Secure Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) technology, designed to deliver data-at-rest security for servers and storage systems.

Read the full press release

URL: http://media.seagate.com/2009/09/seagatetechnology/seagate-first-to-ship-enterprise-class-self-encrypting-drives-to-vars-and-system-builders-worldwide/