I've learned an awful lot about the many ins and outs of managed virtual servers the last few weeks. It's been a fun adventure talking with companies and the experts about the fine art of managed hosting.

There are many advantages to choosing a virtual environment over the more commonly accepted hardware options. It really boils down to a choice between two options:

1. Make a big one time investment in hardware and write it off over a five year period. Hopefully within that time frame one can use the costs more effectively by maximizing the use of computer resources.
2. Or rent the computer resources (CPU, memory, storage, etc) on a monthly basis. As time progresses one can easily expand the resource depending on current needs. Costs are kept more under control and growth should be more predictable.

Another interesting topic of discussion which can get hairy and even philosophical at times is the difference between fair use and bundled bandwidth policies for network usage. A couple of people have discussed it with me but I'm still not convinced about one being any better than the other.