Ditch the Server, Virtualize your Hardware
It looks like purchasing servers for your brand new web two-point-oh application is a sure way to get a cold shoulder in Silicon Valley. CrunchBase and Mogulus do not own a single server according to the scobleizer blog. It did require some changes to the fundamental way they built their application because Amazon’s EC2 is completely volatile. Data is lost when the virtual instance terminates, unless, of course, you store it in Amazon’s S3. So forget transaction durability.
On the bright side, Elastra does have a unique solution in this space. They provide a distributed file system backed by S3 for your EC2 instance. This is definitely a company to watch.