I can't agree strongly enough that you need a documented, repeatable, tested process for getting from bare metal to a production system. This is a pain in the keister -- less of a pain these days with improved tools, but still going to take some time to do right. It will save years of your life if you have an emergency, though.
Postgres is finally catching in terms of replication also: <a href="http://brandonkonkle.com/blog/2010/oct/20/postgres-9-streaming-replication-and-django-balanc/" rel="nofollow">http://brandonkonkle.com/blog/2010/oct/20/postgres-9-streami...</a>