After coming accross this site, I started getting ideas (oh ohh…)
VMWare Virtual Appliances Download Directory
What I’m thinking is this. Set up a base linux OS and on top of that run several virtual machines, all specializing in things they are good at. This should save me time figuring out how to set up the software on the server. Take MythTV. I can spend hours trying to get it working on SuSE, or I can just grab the pre-configured MythBox (or whatever the full linux package is called) which is pre-set up, and ready to run.
Do I want to run a dedicated ISP provider set up? No problem. Set up a virtual machine, and it’s ready to go. If something goes screwy, I don’t have to worry about spending a ton of time figuring out how to fix it, or re-install it and re-configure it. Just use an older image of the virtual machine, and I’m ready to go.

Easy backup of all the virtual machines, since they can all be backed up nicely onto disk, and easily recovered…

I might be on to something.

EDIT:  10 Aug 2006

Just came accross this site.
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/CoolConfigurations