Mepis Linux

LiveCD, System Recovery CD, Linux USB Boot Key
https://www.mepis.org/

Ultimate Deployment Appliance

Unattended OS installations (Windows, Linux, ESX, Solaris) over the network set-up in minutes! Look at http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/

How to shutdown windows from linux

If you have samba you can use "net rpc SHUTDOWN -C "some comment here" -f -I x.x.x.x -U user_name%password"

Running FreeBSD 7.0 on ESX Server

Good resources ...
http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/vmware.html
and
http://scottf.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/running-freebsd-70-on-esx-server/

System Information for Windows

SIW is an advanced System Information for Windows tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings and displays it in an extremely comprehensible manner.
http://www.gtopala.com/

This tool is extremely useful when you need to get your activation code from already installed Windows OS. When this tool does not work you can try KeyFinder
http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Sysprep Virtual Center integration for Win 2003 SP3

http://virtualizationinformation.com/?p=28

VMWare appliances with pre-installed Operating Systems

Pre-installed OS images for VMWare should speed up deployment of particular OS. You can find out some images at http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/