1. A method for remotely managing a hardware/software platform, the method comprising: receiving, at a first location, using a first network interface card (NIC) associated with a hardware portion of said platform, a management packet identifying a first virtual machine associable with the platform, the virtual machine including a logical container and an operating environment; evaluating said management packet via an instruction processor executing on said platform to determine a message type; if the message type is a wake message, then: evaluating whether the first virtual machine has been previously allocated; if the first virtual machine has been previously allocated, making a logical container available and loading an operating environment encapsulating the state of the previously-allocated first virtual machine into the logical container; if the first virtual machine has not been previously allocated, identifying an instruction sequence from the management packet, the instruction sequence suitable for instantiating a virtual machine; making a logical container available for the first virtual machine, and executing the instruction sequence to instantiate the first virtual machine using the logical container.