Backups are very useful for sysadmin experimentation. Assuming you already do your own backups anyway, you can backup a node, upgrade/install certain packages,

Backups are very useful for sysadmin experimentation. Assuming you already do your own backups anyway, you can backup a node, upgrade/install certain packages, do quick tests to make sure everything's working. If there are issues just restore your backup without having to provision and restore your data. I have accounts on both Slicehost and Linode and until now I could be more cavalier with the former because of the undo button backups provide.