- rightscale alternatives -- chef --- sponsored by att --- an opensource ruby project -- puppet -- cfengine -- scalr.net --- way cheaper than rightscale
- ec2 alternative -- eucalyptus --- opensource project on a private cloud -- akamai now hosts applications on their edge servers
- load balancer -- haproxy (http://haproxy.1wt.eu/) --- software based --- allows us to route all traffic to a new cluster once it’s launched and running -- red5 --- hardware based -- algorithms --- round robin