Hrm, why don't people just rent dedicated servers? For less than $100 a month these days you can get a 32GB server with SSDs. If your server dies, the provider needs to replace it... Seems like all win to me.
Edited: Also, your "$100/month" quote is pretty fanciful. Who is handing out 32GB with SSDs for that price? I'd really love to know, because the best I've been able to get for a database quality machine (RAID-10 with BBU, SSDs, and lots of RAM) is closer to 10x that.
they're not talking about machines of that caliber.