Hi all...

I have a Dell server that has a quad Zeon cpu with 8 gigs of ram and 6 - 146GB - 15k RPM HDs that I am considering turning it into a dedicated hardware host for several virtual or dynamic servers.

I have been reading and looking at Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/, 1and1.com Dynamic Cloud Server and other Cloud VPN solutions at RackSpace, etc.

This is all new to me and I want all the information you can provide me with, including software to use (free), etc. Basically what I want to do is setup the hardware server and divide the resources, but also consider using VPS or VDS. I do know I want to keep using Debian Linux or CentOS for the OS.

Thanks

I am on a similar journey to you. Discovering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_(computing) helped (there are links to several alternatives as well) not least as I using Ubuntu more than most distros and that favours Eucalyptus. My understanding is that it is easy to move from Eucalyptus to Amazon et al. I shall be interested in the response you get to your original post.