In my case it is more like 5x24GB RAM servers supporting 20 to 50 VMs depending on the load coupled with a very reliable managed NAS for backup. I can start/sto

In my case it is more like 5x24GB RAM servers supporting 20 to 50 VMs depending on the load coupled with a very reliable managed NAS for backup. I can start/stop some instances using my provider's "cloud" if needed, but found that in practice, I always have room on my own hardware. For the reliability, over 10 years of hosting, I cross my fingers, I have not been hit by any major incident. So, my services have something like a 99.96+% availability and up to now, no data loss or things like that. When reading how much thinking NetFlix had to put in to adjust to the variance in the performance of the VMs/networking/etc. in the cloud (Cf. http://techblog.netflix.com/ http://techblog.netflix.com/) I am happy as a very small shop to not have to think too much about this. A bit yes, but not so drastically. This is why I tend to be happy having "a bit more control" and the current tools like Ganeti are making the management part of the VMs as simple (if not simpler) than with EC2. Anyway, thanks a lot for the feedback, it kind of confirm that I am not totally stupid. :D