Latest version of Building Cloud Castles, given at LRUG in April 2011. A year ago, I was a committed VPS and dedicated-machine deployer. I thought the cloud imposed silly restrictions - how dare you take away my shell account! Whaddya mean I can't save files locally? Since then, I've had some interesting experiences. I've worked on big cloud-deployed systems, and certain large traditionally-deployed systems, and I've seen how a lot of the decisions that you're ... encouraged to make when designing an app to run in the cloud. Most interestingly, I've discovered how those same decisions can make for a much better app regardless of where it'll end up. In this talk, I'll share those architectural patterns with you, and show why they work. Hopefully, I'll convince all of you to build cloud castles -- even if you've got your foundation firmly on the ground.