As for the photo sites, I am just a tad sceptical as to how long these sites will be around, my concern is that one day i go on and all my photos are gone.
Sure, that's a concern for any cloud storage (e.g. backup, web hosting, blogs, etc.) you don't control. However, simply keep backups yourself (a good idea anyways) and you should be good. On the off chance a hosting site goes under, you could always just reupload them to a different one. Maintaining your own server (don't forget to keep them patched!) is a hassle, and IMHO isn't worth it for a novice user (no offense intended if you're not).
If you're just hosting some photos, why multiple virtual machines? Just pick the guest that does what you want the best and run that one.