Good questions you pose here. Choosing a good hosting provider isn’t limited to just Cloud Hosting, you should ask those same questions if you are considering ANY type of hosting. First, some full disclosure here. I’m the Tech Evangelist for GoGrid and ServePath (so thanks for the mention). RightScale is one of our partners, just so that you know.

Concerns about high-availability are important ones to have. Because we are a provider of BOTH cloud hosting and managed hosting, we have over 7 years of expertise for setting up high-availability networks. One of the many unique things that we can offer is what we call “Cloud Connect.” If you need to have a high-end, robust DB solution, for example, that needs managed backups and security, we now allow you to connect managed hosting of these high-end servers with our Cloud offering (GoGrid) for your front end (web/app servers).

In terms of failover or instances failing, this is true with any type of hosting, whether they be dedicated, colo, cloud or shared. You have to dig into the provider and look at their SLA and support structures.

If I can be of any assistance, please let me know.

-Michael