I could, yes. I could spin up a VM, promote it to a DC, move data to it, script the mapping of drives to point to the new, etc. Then I demote the DC, wipe it, and start over.

I just came across the issue of building up a SQL Server 2005 on a standalone copy of Win2003 and then joining the box to a domain later if there will be any issues. A quick google search turns up ...

Amazon's Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) service is now supporting Amazon RDS for SQL Server, along with other enhancements, the company announced on Thursday.