moving software to prod server
 

i have some software that don't have rpms so i need to do
./configure --prefix=
make
make install

I don't want the compilers and other build tools on my production machine. If i do the build process on my test machine and then tar up the directory the application was installed in, can i expect it to work if i untar it on my prod machine?

For example, if i build apache how i like it on test, can i tar the entire directory, move it to prod, and have it work? How identical does the hardware on the 2 machines need to be? Is it fine as long as the base OS is the same? Do both machines need the same type of CPU, for instance both run AMD or both run Intel?

The best approach is to build your own RPMs - you can either use the standard tools, or "checkinstall" which monitors the compilation process and builds a matching RPM.

Software tends to install files in multiple places, so if you just tar up a directory you will miss things. For example, the httpd RPMs install init scripts and configuration files to provide automatic log rotation as well as executables.

FWIW, AMD CPUs are "Intel-compatible". These days the biggest incompatibility prblem is between 32-bit Intel-compatible CPUs and 64-bit (AMD64 and Intel "EMT").