I think it's a fair assessment to say that everyone has a vested interest in saying the way they did it is the best. You do a fine job of "pitching" your approach. I applaud your success, and that's said with sincerity. In my mind, what made you successful was your interest in what ultimately became your career. I did the same thing and it suits me to a "t." I all but bombed out of the local JC and worked full time for a time. My girlfriend dragged me back to shool (small state universoty with no panache) and while I did fine, I stuck to my English major because I had credits invested in it that I would have forfeited had I switched over to CIS or something techie. So I ended up with a BA in a non-marketable major and a few (wasted) electives in computer sciences from a not-so-well-respected school. Life was somewhat up in the air. I married the chick that dragged me to school. On my honeymoon I met a guy who was co-running a local MicroAge. He offered me a gig if I was willing to move. It was meaningless work as a CSR/corporate sales guy but the work interested me and it was a job. I eventually moved into network/systems sales (made the best scratch of my life there too) but over the several years I did it I started to feel like I knew more about the hands-on stuff than the professional services guys whose time I was selling. I built a network at home, took an MCSE prep course, and eventually got technical. I took a 50% paycut to get my first techie job. One job became another and I made manager and then director. Then I stepped down and today I'm an individual contributor making a good salary near my home. I spend as much time as I need with my family. Life is good. What's my point? In a broad sense my experience parallels yours. You ended up doing what you enjoyed and it turned into a productive career. Certainly a top-tier institution would have changed every facet of our careers. Would I have ever taken a CSR gig paying $12/hr with a Stanford or Ivy League degree? No way. I would have fought for something else that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed as much and while you can't see where that would have led me I can't imagine it could be any better than where I am today. So long story short, do what you like and it will seem less like work and more like what you're wanting to do anyway. You were willing to take the work that was available and learn along the way. Me too. Hooray for us. (And for the Nevada Wolfpack, the best consolation prize that came with my degree...)

How can you say "hosted" is not a service model? I think it you looked up "epitome" in the dictionary, it would show a picture of a hosted server farm and a service model.

Know? Yes. Care? No. (And OBTW, you do know that's a TV show...right?)

My company (well not my company, but the one I work for) is a multi-tier retailer, ranked around 8000 by Alexa, and top 5 in it's niche. We are struggling and could use $1M. But there's no way we'd take it to forgo the Google hits. It just wouldn't make any sense, if only for branding reasons.

AD SID and machine SID are different. If you join a system to the domain and then clone it, you'll have two identical *domain* SIDs and problems related to that. If you RTFA and comments, they're talking about having duplicate *machine* SIDs. If machineA connects to machineB, it uses either credentials from the domain or the destination system, so MachineB having a duplicate SID as the MachineA isn't relevant because they're not being compared or checked against each other.

You may be partially right--some of the facilities have space. But some that have "tons" of space are maxed out or near it for power and cooling. Some are not accepting new clients or anticipate turning away business in the next few months. I think it was 365 Main that turned me away and said the move to the cloud would be consuming their capacity. Some of the tenants at 200 Paul have space but some of it is pretty ghetto and limited by power. At least that's what I found in a cursory search dictated by a ceo that doesn't want to build out a server room (40kva w/10 tons hvac) at a new site. If you know cheap and usable co-lo space, all the sushi you can eat!