I hack on salt-cloud, and found it to be a useful tool. And getting better every day... http://github.com/saltstack/salt-cloud

If you build a few map files using salt-cloud, you have a quick vagrant-ish setup that you can start/stop/destroy with ease. Super easy to have a whole test cluster boot up for quick test/dev work. Fyi, salt is really awesome for people looking for alternatives to chef/puppet: http://saltstack.org