Patent ID: 7831997

Claim:
A provisioning mechanism for computer systems comprising: a computer platform having an in-band platform processor and an out-of-band (OOB) controller, a storage media, and a network interface, the storage media having a protected area only accessible to the controller, wherein initially booting up the computer platform causes the controller to: automatically connect to a corporate DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server to obtain an IP (Internet Protocol) address and a domain name; concatenate the domain name with a pre-defined host name to obtain a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) for a provisioning server; establish a TCP connection to the provisioning server using the FQDN to open a secure session; validate a server certificate chain received from the provisioning server; and if the server certificate chain is validated, open a secure and encrypted session and attempt to login to the provisioning server, wherein if corporate security policy grants access to the computer platform, receive provisioning configuration data over a secured and encrypted channel, wherein the OOB controller is able to communicate when the in-band platform processor is not active.