Quoting Dave Melton (dmelton@banzuke.com):
> Is there any way to eliminate the need for a manual fsck?

yeah, shutdown cleanly.  Data in memory not flushed to
disk will cause you problems.

2 things help:
1) A small UPS for a managed shutdown
2) serial console  (and one of several options for a remote
   serial server - I've used boxes that take ssh and have 
   from 1 to 32 serial ports).

> I haven't lost any data yet, but I have had to make a couple
> of 80 mile (133km) round trips to my colo facility to run
> a fsck...

I've moved a SPARC 10 3000 miles away from SunOS 4 to OpenBSD to
NetBSD.  Never touched it (a little netbooting helped during some
of this).