[justauser]

Regarding the use of LXC, I presume since it is a container you're still on the same version/release as the host which in this case is Ubuntu 12.04? So this is the new open-source lock in?

When is someone going to create a tiny gui-less linux distro meant for purposes like this (local and uploaded to your hosting provider) which can then run in KVM and company? And by tiny, I don't mean Debian minimal or an equivalent Fedora. I mean a default size of probably 50MB and not much more for your choice of localization/i18n. Then simple package management to install your language platform and database support.