Backing up mail on OS X 10.6 Dovecot server

Hello everyone. Hope you're all well. I was just looking into updating my Mail server to 10.6.3. I see there is a fix for dovecot in the list. Before I go ahead and update the server I want to backup the mail store. I have read through the Mail Service PDF on the Apple website. It says to use the Ditto command line tool. Unfortunately what it fails to tell me is what i should type to back up the mail store properly. Do i preserve ACLs? Do i need to follow resource forks? Considering since 10.5 + OS X Server suppose to be for the non-technical minded person, if it ever came to a disaster they would be screwed as there doesn't seem to be any easy method documented to create regular backups for maintenance sake or how to restore in case of such a disaster. Some say that Time machine is adequate. Some say that it is not due to the fact it doesn't stop services before-hand. :? So I was wondering if any of you guys know how best to back up this mail store on Snow Leopard? I used to use MailBFR before. :D TIA.