Easier said than done. I just hosed my production install after a problematic update. Spent days fixing it.

How do other people test changes and mods to a sugar install. Virtual machines? Separate hardware? Quick and easy backup/restore of sugar databases and files? Sys admin types feel free to chime in.

Small companies (like mine) have to decide whether its more effective to cross our finers every time we install an update or invest resources in a 'cloned instance'. Perhaps I'm overthinking the issue.

I run a LAMP setup. (Windows users might benefit too :P)

-T