[CentOS] Best way to duplicate a live Centos 5 server?

[Les Mikesell]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 12:34 AM, Emmanuel Noobadmin
<centos.admin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/9/12, Micky <mickylmartin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The best and traditional way that has been there for decades is an rsync
>> and then reinstallation of boot-loader.
>> It works always if you know how it's done.
>
> The problem I found with rsync is that it is very slow when there are
> a lot of small files. Any idea how this can be improved on or is that
> a fundamental limit?

One thing that helps is to break it up into separate runs, at least
per-filesystem and perhaps some of the larger subdirectories.
Depending on the circumstances, you might be able to do an initial run
ahead of time when speed doesn't matter so much, then just before the
cutover shut down the services that will be changing files and
databases and do a final rsync which will go much faster.

Also, have you looked at clonezilla and ReaR?

-- 
  Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com