Sharepoint Portal Architecture and autogenerating WSS site forests

I've been checking out the Sharepoint content on this years teched, and some of the hands-on labs might be somewhat interesting. My major interest regarding sharepoint these days, however, is how to design the Portal architecture. How do you efficiently design the relationship between SPS and WSS and how can automatic generation of WSS sites support structured growth of the portal.

I would have liked this subject to be a BoF session, but in the lack of such I encourage anyone with interest in this subject (or related Sharepoint stuff) do drop a comment and we could hook up during the conference.