I have been using Amazon EC2 and GoGrid recently, and I found myself spinning out a server to do a specific task (converting Subversion repository to git repository, copying a database, trying out VS 2010, etc).

Usually I do it because the cloud machines has a lot more bandwidth than I have locally, and I can also choose a specific OS + services that match what I care for. I am not used to thinking about servers in this fashion, but I find myself doing it fairy often recently.

Interesting shift.