How would I go about making a development server from the current state of my production server? I'm looking to upgrade some packages, but I have a feeling its going to break things.

I have a Centos 5.8 box running an old version of Mediawiki (1.16) with an old version of php (5.1.6). I'm seeking to update Mediawiki, which requires php 5.3, but since php 5.3 is in package "php53" for Centos I anticipate running into some version and dependency issues.

I guess I'm looking to make a virtual development server to try all this out on some VM on another machine. How would I go about doing this?

I'm interested in learning, but this is the first time I'm delving into development servers, so I'll really appreciate any help or advice on this. Thanks.

TL;DR: How do I image my current Centos 5.8 box into a VM of some sort for testing software upgrades?