One last question from me before I dig into actually creating my sites. Again, I thank you for your time Edwin.

What if I wanted to have my subsites at www.mydomain.com/services/MYSUBSITE?

I made a services folder and set it to 777. I then modified my JMS template to point to the services folder instead of multisites folder. But when I tried to create a new slave site, I got the "Cannot create symbolic link" error again.

Ideas?

For my deployment, adding the subsites under services just makes more sense.

"Cannot create symbolic link" is related to a permission issue.

Have you tested to see if you can deploy the slave site into the jms {site_dir}
If it works with {site_dir} and that you have the /services/XXXXX directory, you will be able to compare the permisssion and perhaps also the owner.

If your deploy directory does not use the same root directory then you have also to check the open_basedir parameter of your hosting server
Perhaps you try to create a symbolic link in a directory where your domain has no permission.