I have several dedicated servers running RedHat Linux ES4 . I am looking to make signficant changes to one of them and would rather test them out on a development system before making them live. Is there any way to clone an entire server (the environment and the data) though SSH or something similar? The goal is to clone the dedicated server located at a the data center to a development system at home.
If you know what functionality you plan to change (web server, email, or some other service), then perhaps it's much easier and faster to just copy the relevant set of data and put it onto a newly installed home development setup? For webserver, you'll only have to copy the config files and the directories with the website pages. Compared to a full image of the system, it couldl mean only a few megs vs a potential few gigs.