Seeking tips on monitoring my dedicated server..
 

One of my servers is a dedicated managed server and I really have no idea how to tell what's going on with it. Let's say I see my cpu spiking up to 3% which would be rare. How can I find out what is causing that? Do I need ssh and to know various unix commands? Are there any monitoring tools that can show me more than just cpu usage? I'd like to be able to see more detail of the server's usage, sort of like what you see when you ctrl-alt-del a windows box and click the processes tab. Thanks for any tips or commands that I can type into a console.

well one way is using a command through the terminal(ssh): ps -aux :that will show you the processes on the box. i'm sure there are php scripts to do that but not sure what they are.

This is a nice script to have which will give you some basic info.
http://phpsysinfo.sourceforge.net/

Try taking a look at Erwins Top hack which will give you some server stats in your admincp.