LAMP Systems Disaster Recovery

These are MySQL and Perl CGI applications, running under Linux, and every one of them is different. Disaster recovery planning for these applications has consisted of routine tape backups of all the software and data, a bunch of ReadMe files, and having me around to put the pieces back together if something breaks—and things do break... power supplies, disk drives, RAID controllers, you name it. Recovery means we fix or replace the hardware, reinstall Linux, restore the apps from tape, and then stitch everything back together. Some recoveries have been easy. Others have involved pacing back and forth and swearing for hours on end while figuring out how the heck I had all this working in the first place. Not pretty, but that's just what you do, right?