Intel® vPro™ Technology

Power Efficiency and Sustainable Information Technology

Utilizing Out of Band Capabilities to Maximize Energy Efficiency

Traditional PC management is accomplished through agents installed on the operating system. This means that the agent must be running in order for common manageability tasks to occur. Intel® vPro™ technology provides out of band (OOB) capabilities that allow IT system administrators to access systems, independent of the operating system type or the state. This is important because utilizing Intel vPro technology OOB permits the client PCs to gravitate toward the lowest possible power state and still be available to be queried, inventoried, and patched. This integration of enterprise operations management capabilities is unique in that there is now a capacity to manage notebook PCs remotely, independent of their location. We are in an era in which robust OOB management capabilities exist and can be implemented to provide the enterprise a way to balance productivity, manageability, and energy efficiency.

Mobile PCs with Intel® vPro™ Technology
In addition to the obvious solutions described in this article for desktop PCs, there is a less well-understood Intel vPro technology solution for notebook PCs. Notebook PCs are routinely taken home by employees and therefore they cannot be managed on the internal corporate network. Employees who turn their notebook PCs off at night have experienced significant disruption when first connecting to the corporate network in the morning, especially if they are remotely connecting.

However, notebook PCs enabled with Intel® Centrino® 2 processor technology and with Intel vPro technology also have the ability to be managed outside the corporate network. In this scenario, when employees are finished using their notebook PCs at home, they would turn them off to conserve energy, but not turn off the AC power source. The notebook PC can be configured to wake up on a timed basis and securely call back into the corporate network to process any needed updates and then turn itself off. In this manner, employees can avoid time-consuming updates and be assured that their notebook PC is fully compliant with corporate policies before they connect to the corporate network remotely through the Virtual Private Network (VPN).

BIOS Configuration Elements
Intel vPro technology gives administrators the ability to remotely access BIOS power configuration elements on client PCs to ensure adherence to corporate policies via the ACPI standard. Across the board the adoption of the ACPI standard (in conjunction with the operating system and applications) helps to standardize the power state functionality of the hardware device (for example, what happens when you close a notebook PC). There are also C-states for idle central processing units (CPUs) as well as P-states for active CPUs: these states can control frequency and voltage for more efficient operation. The most popular utilization of the ACPI specifications is the S-state, that is, the sleep state (see Table 1).

Table 1: Sleep states and their energy usage

S-state	Description	Comment
S1	All system context retained	Lowest energy savings
S2	CPU and cache context lost	Not often used
S3	Memory context saved ("sleep")	Typical balanced policy
S4	Platform context only saved ("hibernate")	Longer resume cycle
S5	No context saved ("soft off")	Best energy savings

Operating System Considerations
Operating system configuration is important for energy efficiency. There is robust support for ACPI power-management functionality in many client operating systems. Intel vPro technology capabilities can be utilized in conjunction with configuration management software to set the appropriate configuration, based on the type and version of operating system software installed on the client PC. It is important to conduct an appropriate amount of testing before integrating BIOS and operating system, power-management configuration options.

Back to Top