Be wary about drawing conclusions from "most of the jobs were small." Most of my jobs are small -- because I'm running experiments so I won't have to redo the big one.

That said, I'm a huge proponent of running stuff simply at first. Few businesses will ever grow to the point that they need more than a single large database server and one or two backups. Don't waste your time prepping for something you'll probably never need, especially when fixing the problem when the time comes is only marginally more painful than doing it right in the first place.