Dell Client Agentless Manageability

[Technical Whitepaper]

Dell Agentless Client Manageability Technical Whitepaper

BIOS Development

Abstract

How to manage Dell client devices by leveraging their direct WMI capabilities July 2020

ID 413

Revisions

Revisions

Date July 2020

Description Initial release

Acknowledgements

Author: Girish Prakash

The information in this publication is provided "as is." Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.

Copyright ? 2020 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. [7/28/2020] [Technical Whitepaper] ID 413

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Dell Agentless Client Manageability Technical Whitepaper | ID 413

Table of contents

Table of contents

Revisions............................................................................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................................2 Table of contents ................................................................................................................................................................3 Executive summary.............................................................................................................................................................4 1 Introduction...................................................................................................................................................................5

1.1 Background.........................................................................................................................................................5 1.2 Windows Management Instrumentation & PowerShell ......................................................................................5 2 Platform Level Data Modeling ......................................................................................................................................6 2.1 Enumeration attribute .........................................................................................................................................6 2.2 Integer attribute...................................................................................................................................................6 2.3 String attribute ....................................................................................................................................................6 3 WMI namespace, classes and instances .....................................................................................................................7 3.1 EnumerationAttribute..........................................................................................................................................7 3.2 IntegerAttribute ...................................................................................................................................................7 3.3 StringAttribute .....................................................................................................................................................7 4 Modifying Attributes & BIOS Defaults. .........................................................................................................................9 5 Boot order enumeration and configuration.................................................................................................................12 6 Managing passwords .................................................................................................................................................14 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................................15

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Dell Agentless Client Manageability Technical Whitepaper | ID 413

Executive summary

Executive summary

Managing Dell client devices without additional agentry is an important capability for many customers. This paper explains how to use the WMI interface to leverage the default namespaces that are available to manage Dell client devices without the need for additional agents or tools.

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Dell Agentless Client Manageability Technical Whitepaper | ID 413

Introduction

1 Introduction

This whitepaper provides technical information on how customers can leverage "zero-touch" or agentless management aspects of Dell? commercial client platforms. The interface described in this whitepaper is included on Dell commercial client systems released to market after calendar year 2018.

1.1

Background

Configuring Dell client systems without first installing a system management agent such as Dell Command Suite agents can be challenging. These agents equip the system with proprietary interfaces, services, and console UI- and CLI-based tools, but as soon as you introduce agent software into the equation, you also need to develop and maintain update and redeployment plans. There is, however, another way to accomplish a seamless, out-of-box experience without the need to install and maintain agents.

1.2

Windows Management Instrumentation & PowerShell

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is the infrastructure for management data & operations on Windows based operating systems. For more details on WMI see .

PowerShell is a cross-platform task automation and configuration management framework consisting of command-line shell and scripting language. For more details see

Most Dell commercial client systems are Windows-based, and IT administrators are not new to WMI and PowerShell. These two technologies are built on industry standards, are simple. and enable scripting which allows IT professionals to easily integrate them with their existing infrastructure or develop custom scripts around these technologies. Microsoft has done a great job enhancing PowerShell capabilities to integrate and manage WMI infrastructure in a seamless manner. This is why we chose this path to expose BIOS configurable entities through WMI, and this technical whitepaper demonstrates sample scripts to configure the same.

It is also worth mentioning that using this method to configure Dell business client systems is a uniform common interface across multiple brands, including Latitude, Optiplex, Precision, and XPS laptops. It also provides stable ways to enhance hardware management features and does not alter across various Windows operating system versions.

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Dell Agentless Client Manageability Technical Whitepaper | ID 413

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