My System

        I am currently using a IBM x335 dual Xeon sever with 2gb ram and dual 36gb SCSI drives in Raid 1.  I installed CentOS 5 on it (the smoothest OS install I have ever done... EVER...), and some basic software.  The first step I did was to install mysql5 and then php5 in fastCGI mode (with a bunch of included modules, not limited to APC).  Then I installed Lighttpd with RRD, LUA and SSL support.  So from that point, I had an "operational" server.  But I want to interact with it.  So here's the list of software I installed to make administration easier.

phpMyAdmin

        If you've ever used any form of control panel, you have used phpMyAdmin.  It's a great, robust, user friendly and powerful tool for administrating a MySQL database server.  If there is only one piece of software from this list you choose to install, make phpMyAdmin it.  It's pretty easy to install (copy the files over, and run the configuration script), and if you can install MySQL, you won't have a problem installing phpMyAdmin.

Webalizer

        What good is a web server unless you have an idea how it's being used?  Webalizer is another one of those staples of most control panels.  I like the simple interface it provides (simple, but powerful).  The install is easy, and the configuration is easy as well (there are more difficult options, but you don't need them, so).  I definitely consider this a "must have" tool for any web server. 

SICM

        Most people will have never heard of this product (I didn't until a few days ago).  SICM stands for Simple Infrastructure Capacity Monitor.  The install is really easy (copy files to their respective locations).  Configuration and setup, I cannot say is as easy.  I had a PITA trying to get SICM and SNMP configured properly, but once I did, it was worth every minute!  This software basically monitors system information and stores it every few minutes.  Within no time you'll have pretty (and informative) graphs on all sorts of data (ping times, bandwidth use, disk usage, CPU usage, server load, processes, memory usage and more)!  The best part of this software is that it's completely customizable.  One installation can monitor multiple servers as well as also monitoring multiple applications (such as Lighttpd), and can pull data from them (such as hits/s) with custom made modules.  This is definately a "must have".  Once you try it, you'll be amazed how you survived without it!

Mod_rrdtool for Lighttpd

        Mod_rrdtool is an implementation of RRD (Round Robbin Database) which stores information in a time based format.  Basically, once you have collected some data, you can have RRD output a graph (there's a script included to do just that) of the data over time.  By default, mod_rrdtool stores requests per second and traffic (you could even define different databases for each domain).  So you can watch how your traffic patterns change over any time frame (from 1 minute to over 1 year)!  If you are using Lighttpd, you NEED rrdtool!

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