Marcin Cieslak wrote:

An interesting thread from osm developers mailing list re replication methods:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.openstreetmap.devel/17000/focus=17002

Which the osm.org tile server is also currently using. There still might be undiscovered issues with these, but on face value they seem to work just fine.

Using minute-replicate means no 5 minute delay and no lost items, and is a good thing if you're not planning to run full planet imports every few weeks but still want to be reasonably sure you're not missing items due to the old diff issues (with large changesets).