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"A physical server needs drivers to talk to it's hardware. A virtualized server, in essence, does the same thing. VMware presents new hardware to allow the virtual machine to talk to it's hypervisor. Think of the driver issue in a P2V migration like removing a video card and installing a new one. The drivers and hidden hardware are still there just in case you feel like popping the video card back in. A P2V will still have all of the old hardware in the virtual machine. Don't forget about services that physical servers used, namely HP server management services."

Free hardware inventory and software inventory for windows networks

"Racktables is a nifty and robust solution for datacenter and server room asset management. It helps document hardware assets, network addresses, space in racks, networks configuration and much much more!" HT to @wantmoore for the find

"Ekahau HeatMapper is a free software tool for quick and easy coverage mapping of Wi-Fi (802.11) networks. It's the only free, easy-to-use tool that shows, on a map, the wireless network coverage in your home or small office. HeatMapper also locates all access points." In addition to the free software, paid laptop and portable versions are available, with and without wireless cards and other hardware.

"Observium is an autodiscovering PHP/MySQL based network monitoring system focused primarily on Cisco and Linux networks but includes support for a wide range of network hardware and operating systems."

"Reposado, together with the "curl" binary tool and a web server such as Apache 2, enables you to host a local Apple Software Update Server on any hardware and OS of your choice. Reposado contains a tool (repo_sync) to download Software Update catalogs and (optionally) update packages from Apple's servers, enabling you to host them from a local web server."

Download link to Dell OpenManage System Administrator Managed Node installer that allows you to view hardware, including RAID, status on a Dell server from within Windows. It also adds logging to the event logs (which can then be monitored) for RAID-related errors and warnings.

"Synopsis: The mechanics of BIOS password locks present in current generation laptops are briefly outlined. Trivial mechanisms have been put in place by most vendors to bypass such passwords, rendering the protection void. A set of master password generators and hands-on instructions are given to disable BIOS passwords."

Useful educational video to help people who are trying to clean their laptop fans. Also really, really entertaining and funny.

Very cool tiny PC that can run Linux or Windows 7, has single or dual NICs, no fan, has DVI and serial port, and optional Wifi. Starts at $300.

"This table contains a list of systems, motherboards, storage controllers and network cards that have been tested and found to work with ESX 4.x or ESXi 4.x Installable. Please check out the source column for a system you are considering using as some systems will include special steps to enable ESX / ESXi to run on that system or have other issues to overcome. None of these systems are supported by VMWare for running ESX."

Laptop docs for Mac laptops.