Answered Memcached and separate Manager instance

So I've started playing with memcached, even got it installed and working (I think) on my localhost MacBook. I'm still a little hazy on some of the details of how this thing works.

Now, I've been given to understand that for busy sites one can use a separate installation of MDOX for all things Manager, using memcached. I think I have the general idea, but I do have a couple of questions.

1. If you're doing all of your work on the dev Manager, exactly how does this stuff get into the prod database? Cron jobs to sync the databases during off-peak times? It doesn't get into the prod database, and is only in the prod memcached caches?

2. I know that memcached servers can be set to use a remote server's memcached. I would presume that you would want the actual cached stuff, particularly resources, to be in the prod memcached caches. So how would one go about getting a newly created or edited resource on dev into the cache on prod? Would this be an automatic function of the dev memcached servers being set to the prod IP address? All one would need to do is explicitly put something in the cache with a plugin on publish or on save?

Of course! I was so fixated on the memcached issues that I completely forgot about the database server!