Intel AMT Power Driver Tutorial

Docs
1

Quick tutorial for enabling Intel AMT power driver with MAAS

Enabling Intel AMT in BIOS

Start up the device connected to a screen and keyboard in order to configure its bios.

  1. In BIOS settings go to MEBx settings.
    • On some devices, you first need to enable MEBx via BIOS, then reboot, and then go into MEBx config screen by pressing ctrl-p.
    • On some devices, you need to set a BIOS Admin password before the MEBx settings will show up.
  2. Set a password
    • Default password is admin.
    • Record the new password. It must be 8-32 characters long and include at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one digit, and one special (non-alphanumeric) character such as '.
  3. Disable user prompting (or set it to NONE)
  4. Enable networking
    • Set to DHCP
    • Share everything with host OS

Note that Intel AMT forgets its config if the motherboard completely loses power. So check if your CMOS batteries are still working and if needed, replace them.

Configuring it in MAAS

Intel AMT uses the same IP as the device gets from DHCP. Normally, servers use a different IP after deployment. This means that the configured IP in the AMT power driver will be incorrect. To work around this, you can configure MAAS to always give the device the same IP.

  1. After MAAS discovered the device, you need to set the network interface that supports Intel AMT to “Dynamic” IP assignment.(Machines > [machine] > Network > [arrow in ACTIONS column] > Edit Physical > IP assignment > Dynamic).
  2. Now you’ll be able to see that interface IP in MAAS.
  3. Set the device Power type to “Intel AMT” and fill in the info.
    • Older devices will use HTTP
    • Newer devices will use HTTPS. Note that this is currently broken until this fix is released.
  4. As “Power address”, use the IP of the network interface that supports Intel AMT.

Manually using Intel AMT

After you turned on AMT in the BIOS, you should be able to surf to

  • https://<device-ip>:16993 on newer devices, or
  • http://<device-ip>:16992 on older devices.

Intel AMT can do a lot more than just be a power driver for MAAS. For example, it can give you a remote terminal to even remotely configure the BIOS.

MeshCommander seems to be the most reliable way to connect to older AMT systems.

For usage on Linux, see https://www.npmjs.com/package/meshcommander