Can I clone an identical mac and use together?

I use a 2011 MBP to produce music. I use a program called Vienna Ensemble Pro, which uses ethernet to create virtual servers for streaming audio between machines, enabling you to spread processing tasks between a number of "slave" machines. Its great. Very clever.
I would like to get another identically spec'd machine, clone the hard drive and use it along side my existing system as a "slave".
Any reasons why this might be a problem using Carbon Copy Cloner, for example? Essentially, I'm trying to save myself days configuring the set up. Getting smooth running DAW and Plugins is no easy task!

You can do that - or you can simply use the MIgration Assistant (this launches automatically following a new OS X install) to pull your data over from the source Mac to the new one.

But Migration Assistant wouldn't make a clone machine, with all the installations, etc, just copy over data?
What I want to do is have a dual version of the WHOLE system. And I guess I want to know if this is prone to any problems. It seems theoretically possible to my limited understanding of OSX, assuming it was done on an identically spec'd machine.

Assuming the new machine has the same version of OS X, yes, it will pull over everything (including installed applications).

But you can also use CCC or SuperDuper. Though if you have products that use a product activation scheme for copy protection (think Microsoft Office for Mac), you may have issues as the product ID is tied to unique signatures specific to the hardware it was installed on.

Thats a big yes then. I have all sorts of product authorisations, which is why I hoped to clone these to a new machine. Didnt realise they would be tied to specific hardware. I guess its pretty obvious that this would be a problem even though I own all the software. Thanks.