[Zope] Howto Developement Environment?

[Jerome R. Westrick]

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.