Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's probably not included because keeping your production server outside of a datacenter is kind of a silly idea. you save some money, but you don't have the cooling, the power conditioning, the network redundancy, or the security of a proper facility.
I suppose it depends on your use case, but I don't see those as necessarily worse failure modes than other options. For example, Reddit has in the past been down for >20 hours at a time with its cloud solution. With a local solution, you would want offsite backup for the catastrophic "building burned down" failure mode, but most local failures can be solved in that kind of timeframe with the "drive to Frys, buy new s…
Most of us have at least ~5Mbps/ 2Mbps (up/down) connections at home that are always on with minimal latency. The gaming service OnLive shows that these connections are adequate for most people's needs. Home/ office connections will only get better, and I think the idea of running one's own server(s) for things like family and/ or small offices will make more sense than some 3rd party corporation's "cloud." PIM, email, IM, pictures, videos etc. simply don't need to be subject to the whims or TOS of a company or outside one's own control.
This is what I do currently, and it certainly is a kludge at the moment, but I believe it can be improved to the point of appliance-usage eventually.
