Hi, I am interested in recommendations for server deployment tools. The idea would be to connect say a laptop to an internal network and have a central server deployment tool which would check the laptop for upgrades and re-install the laptop completely including Linux and all other applications.

Anyone got any good links for such a beast ?.

sure do! it is still in beta, but works near perfectly. check out NOC monkey (http://nocmonkey.psoft.net/) I have been using it for some time now. Basically you grab images of OS'es to an central NOC monkey server. You can then boot any other device on the local network off of LAN, enter its MAC address into NOC monkey, and deploy an entire server build with just a few simple steps. It is pretty nice because it allows you to set the IP, hostname, root password, and gateway via a simple GUI. It's definetely worth checking out, and they are making new releases quite often now.