Many of my client discussions have been around creating lab environments for developers - new on the scene is Visual Studio Lab Management 2010..

Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 enables teams to accelerate setup/tear down and restoration of complex virtual environments to a known state for test execution and build automation. It extends build automation by automating virtual machine provisioning, build deployment and build verification in an integrated manner. It also allows testers to file rich bugs with links to environment checkpoints that developers can use to recreate complex environments, effectively reducing wasted time and resources in your development and test lifecycle.

Please take a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/lab_management/ and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee712698.aspx as well. These links have a lot of architectural and step-by-step guidance.