I have created a medium sized disaster recovery farm and have restored two portals (with WSS sites and managed paths) as well as some stand-alone WSS sites that have their own content databases - this was done by copying production databases to the farm creating new portals and restoring them - I couldn't use the Bill English method for technical reasons even with PSS support. I now have two more WSS sites to restore that have managed paths. I notice that unlike the portal situation, the managed paths are not restored when I connect to the restored content databases. Is this to be expected? Should I just install the managed paths the same as in the production environment?

I want to be able to replicate the production environment and be able to update the databases periodically using a SAN to SAN flash copy of all databases except the configuration database (which would be located on a non-SAN drive). In the event of a disaster, we would use dns push to redirect traffic to the DRP farm.