Dropbox should have used a Jumpbox

During our YC demo, we just used VMWare, dumped our server into it, changed the host file to point draftmix.com to the proper IP, and boom. So while investors were seeing our actual code in action (not some prerecorded, ideal situation version) it wasn't dependent on the internet.<p>Also amazing for us was the ability to snapshot. We started up a league, snapshotted, then ran from there, so that when the demo started, we could show a league in action.

I can appreciate the advantage of having my server environment on a USB drive, particularly if I don't want to lug my laptop to a demo, or my laptop is AWOL, or the situation calls for using someone else's computer. That seems very useful, and I can see the value of Jumpbox for those reasons alone. I know that it's also a breeze to fire up for ad-hoc development environments.<p>But when the only technical challenge is internet connectivity, such as in this case, what is the advantage of Jumpbox over VMWare or Parallels?

They would then have had to clone s3 as well, is there a Jumpbox for that?<p>I think the best solution in this case would have been a hardwired connection with a EVDO card as backup.