Disk cloning redux

[Dimitri Yioulos]

Hi, folks.

At the risk of earning your scorn and enmity, I'd like to ask once more about 
how I might proceed with a disk cloning project.  I have certainly 
appreciated everyone's feedback, but am not sure I've gotten a definitive 
solution  Once again, here are the key

-- system to be cloned is remote; no access but for minor tasks (e.g. hard 
reboot)
-- system resides in its entirety on sda
-- need faithful reproduction of sda on sdb in order to save Ensim 
installation, and as DR mechanism
-- no RAID or LVM on system
-- down time not an option (so not able to use Clonezilla, G4L, etc.)
-- active MySQL databases
-- have heard/read that:
         * dd shouldn't be used on systems with open files
         * creating software RAID post-system installation may lead to data 
loss

But, because I've also read/heard that others have used dd for this purpose, 
I'm still leaning toward it.

Any final thoughts, ideas, tips, tricks, etc.  Or, again, am I SOL?

And again, thanks for your patience and input.

Dimitri

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.