HACKER Q&A
📣 jblake

Best way to have a “hot standby” dev machine? (mac)


I develop on a Macbook Pro and I want to get a Mac Mini to have as a backup machine. Ideally, whatever happens in certain directories on my laptop, and synced quickly to the Mac mini. Any suggestions?

  👤 stephenr Accepted Answer ✓
I kind of have this setup, except the other way around (a desktop Mac mini, and a MBP15 as a travel/spare machine).

The solution for me, is to have a TB3 M2 enclosure with a 1TB SSD in it, and use that exclusively for work.

I use iCloud for keychain, mail, etc; I have my dot files (including SSH keys) synced via iCloud Drive, so that stuff is pretty much ready to use once the second machine is online.

If the mini goes tits up, I'd likely have to install some software updates on the MBP but otherwise it's a pretty seamless transfer.

👤 Bucephalus355
One Thing - Jetbrains IDE or anything else where you can configure a ton of options.

Have a cron script to constantly export the preference file and sync to cloud or local NAS.