Hosting Slowdown

As often happens with new projects of mine I have already outgrown the friggin' budgeted resources on my cluster. This means a new server. Instead of buying one and installing it in the Los Angeles data center I plan on leasing one from Hostway. I really don't want to go through the hassle of shipping/installing linux/installing load balancing/hardening the kernel and then spending a few days installing it on the cluster. UGH. Quick solution here is to get one big enough and revisit it in one year. I am on the phone with the hosting provider to see if there are any other issues that might be gumming up the works (maybe they are undergoing a distributed DOS).