We maintain several Drupal websites. Typically we setup a second instance of a site on a development server and assign it a unique subdomain. Setting up the dev site, subdomain, and periodically refreshing content is time consuming.

I'm considering adding a second IP address to our Linode account, and then when we have development work to do, restore a backup image of the live site to the Linode and assign it the other IP address. I'll then update my local DNS to point to the dev version. Is it possible to boot two images to one Linode as long as each is assigned separate IP addresses? Is there a better setup for a dev server? Thanks for any suggestions!

Pete

No.

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/ Peter

I know this is a slightly old thread now, but I thought I would share what I do,as I too would be very interested in what other people do.
I have a main Linode server and a secondary (less powerful) Linode server, I call it "staging".
My main Linode has daily backups and whenever I want to test something (Drupal/Magento/OS upgrades for example) I restore the most recent backup to my secondary server. I then test the update, if it all works smoothly, I then repeat the process (manually) on live.

In order to test, I edit my local hosts file (/etc/hosts for Linux and Mac) and point my domain(s) to my staging server's IP address (On Mac, there's a great app called Horst that saves hosts configurations, so I just flick a switch). This saves having to worry about subdomains etc and for me, feels really good because I know I am working with up to date files and a 100% replica of the main server with no worry about effecting live until I know it's safe.

I also use this for testing new things, for example installing Varnish. If it works on staging, I can repeat it on live.