Grid-service?

[Tony]

A friend just signed up with these guys. Looks like an interesting approach. http://mediatemple.net/

No shared hosting, instead something they call "Grid-service".

Burstable Resources Your sites are always ready to handle intense bursts of web traffic from Digg, Reddit, Slashdot or any other major source. Your databases automatically scale along with web traffic using the innovative Auto-Scaling MySQL system.

This type of burst-ability is what I've been suggesting for a long time. No site should ever be suspended just because they got Digged.

[Matt R.]

I was involved at www.applogic.com at a fairly early stage (getting on for 3 years ago). Unfortunately, the simple fact is that the majority of these systems are still in beta and unstable. MediaTemple has a lot of downtime.

We continue our own R&D on Citrix/Xen based scalable solutions.

[carlobee]

this is indeed great and a future-oriented idea!!

[Matt R.]

We have a grid/cloud service being developed by our R&D guys now. Expect a Q4 2009 or Q1 2010 launch...