Easiest way to replicate an SQL database?

I've got two Ubuntu Server installs. One is an actual VPS, the other is a virtual install on a desktop. The virtual machine has much more computing power than the VPS.

I have a Perl script that I run every week which is moderately CPU and RAM intensive, which sometimes crashes due to lack of resources. I can easily run it in the virtual machine, but I would need to mirror the database up to the VPS so that the data can be accessed by PHP to serve end users.

I'm looking for a relatively pain-free way of doing this that can be automated to replicate once the Perl script is finished.