Awesome; this question has been a thorn in my side for so long. It's great to get a clear picture of it!

I agree. Totally essential, and really good for team motivation too.

Good topic, but of course if you were starting now you would just begin on EC2 and be done with it.

Depends on the goals. They didn't say how much their "10x traffic" actually is, but by the sound of it they could probably save money by moving to dedicated hardware.

Finally, some love for the Gleec.