When our friends at Scale tell us that the NUCs have Intel AMT and that we shouldn’t be worried about not having DRACs, turns out they are right! MeshCentral is a pretty neat piece of software, and it allows centralized aggregation of AMT capable devices for remote access.
I fought with the installer for a while, but eventually sorted out the part that none of the documentation said. Here are a few facts, you can ingest them in whatever order you’d like, at your leisure:
- Installing a whole server takes very little time on Windows through the binary installer on the MeshCentral Download Page. You’ll have to fight the CA monster if you don’t have that piece sorted out in your domain.
- Bringing up a linux server is blisteringly easy, thanks to the work of techahold and their super easy MeshCental Installer Script. If you’re using Debian or Ubuntu, you build the whole dang thing, complete with LetsEncrypt scripts, in about 10 minutes.
- It may behoove you to run this on the internet using a VPS. I have a machine on DigitalOcean with a subdomain of our TLD and its about $24 a month. Its accessible out of band, and works extremely quickly. Something to think about if you don’t like cert errors or fooling with it.
I have brought up the Agent installer to Scale and they are curious. Right now, it has to be installed as root, and thereby grants root access (which they don’t love).
If your MeshCentral server is internal, you can configure the nodes at the machine level, and simply scan the network to pick them up and view/interact with them.