by Colin Fraser.
Just out of curiosity, what version of PHP is on your Dev server and your production site? What version/s of Moodle? Assuming they are the same, then what plugins, blocks, etc do you have? Are they the same in both? What about Users? Did you include User data in your backup? If you did, is it possible that the restore is hanging on a duplicated id, or an id that does not exist? (It is not supposed to, but...) What is the site upload limit? Are you restoring into an existing course or to a brand new, non-existing course and expecting Moodle to just create the course for you? All these things can cause an issue, and a lot more besides.