For the most part, cloud means Linux and Linux means Linux like tools. "The cloud" is just virtualized spaces for scalable non-local or network accessed systems. Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud, and a growing list of providers deliver virtualized space for your virtual systems. Building tools for that space often means developing portant or homogenous apps and systems. Switching between developing on Windows then trying to scale in Linux can cause issues. For the simpler approach, or beginner, running a virtualized homogenous environment makes life much simpler.
Running Linux makes a lot more sense that banging your head against Linux like tools (GPL and the like) for Windows when it's so easy to just run Linux. But, I'd run a down and dirty command line server edition instead of the GUI slugfest that is most desktop Linux distributions. Sure, the pretty stuff is pretty, and given enough power (like what you'd give Windows) it can be very graphic and user friendly. But, we're working here. Like reading books with more words than pictures, black and white text gets the job done in Linux world.
It should be noted here that Macports and the Unix underbelly available in Mac makes the Mac a perfect pro-cloud platform without virtualization. But, for Linux specific research the Linux virtual machine is quite useful.
Step one: set up the virtual space to work. We're going to use command line tools like version control, synchronization tools, and secure remote access. Thanks to keys we can eliminate logging in remotely with a series of passwords. We just use a key, and lock it away in a safe place on our new virtual Linux server we're going to run on the local Windows PC or Mac.
Virtual Box is a free virtual machine. You can download preexisting machine images to run in the VM environment or you can install one from an ISO, DVD, or CD source. There are two competing products that offer a commercial virtual environment, and they can make pushing files between the environments (operating systems) much easier.
VMware are one of the big boys in the business, and their environment manager is very nice. VMware Workstation
Parellels is also quite useful, plus it's a little cheaper than VMware. Parellels Desktop Virtualization
Microsoft offers its own brand of virtualization, but it's not as widely embraced and leans a bit toward virtualizing Windows PCs. I'm assuming you already have a hardware running Windows PC, if you want one.
