Development Web Server - please help

Need info on creating a test server to compliment my live server

[deliman]

Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone could provide me with some information or better yet links to websites that describe the pros and cons of creating a development (test) web server to compliment the live server.
As well as the process and various optional methods I could go through to create a development server that I could upload work in progress to, and then migrate and synch it to the "live" server with the click of a button to facilitate any changes i make.

I have to do a 20 page work term report on this topic so anyone posting any sort of helpful information on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

[Herath]

deliman

I don't think there are any cons in creating a dev server for your site. (Other than the extra money spent on hardware) It will absoluntly improve your productivity and your production server's stability specially if your site is dynamic / database oritented.

We took a norton ghost image of our production server and put that on the development server. For synching we simply use a central CVS repository.