Before you start configuring eZ publish based on your specification, you need to make sure you have the appropriate environments in place. For any decently sized project, you should have three environments: development, staging, and production. All three environments need to be identical in terms of configuration. The same versions of all software need to be on all servers. This is vital; a minor difference in versions of any part of the environment can lead to problems. Having a different point release of MySQL may cause problems when you move from one environment to the next.
In terms of hardware, they can be different; the development server need not be as powerful as those for staging or production. But it must have a reasonable performance or it will slow down the progress of development. If you try to cut corners and only set up a single environment, you will inevitably run into problems later in the project when content population starts and especially when there's a...