[Zope] Howto Developement Environment?

Hello Zopistas... Please excuse the repost if it happens... sent question yesterday, and it did not make it to list.. Anyway, I have a productive zope application, one server. I have a backup (considering to use it as developement) machine, that I want to keep up-to-date. Before I go do something stupid, what is the listers expiriences developement/productin environments? How do you all do this? what procedures do you use? Jerry P.S. I already got burned by the zope versioning system once, so I would like to avoid it.