aegir multi-server hosting

Thought I would share some useful info (before I ask for support help) on a few lessons I have learned for a Aegir multi-server configuration I have running at Linode (IMO the only Linux VPS for hardcore Drupal deployment). My ultimate goal is to be able deploy Drupal sites in a HA environment without having a complicated mess of more than 5 servers and running services like clustered MySQL.
The main problems I encountered in getting a multi-server configuration to the point where I could deploy a site and migrate it around to different nodes were;