DanBlake I share your same sentiment. We went the real servers route and when someone does if they use programmatic methodologies for system administration (Pup

DanBlake I share your same sentiment. We went the real servers route and when someone does if they use programmatic methodologies for system administration (Puppet, Chef) you can have systems online just as quickly or systems reprovisioned in to different roles very quickly. We call it our own private cloud! Edit: Note we are using an automated Debian preseed with Puppet installing from an internal repository to bring the systems online with minimal sysadmin interaction.