I would have thought the cost of a hosting control panel was well worth the money when you consider all the tools that it gives "out of the box" - it can make a "green" server admin very effective very quickly.
Take a look at DirectAdmin for Linux Hosting too - Cpanel is also good - but I find DirectAdmin very easy to use interface (as compared).
If "no" to the above - then perhaps a standard "LAMP" install with phpmyadmin and webmin as suggested earlier. There are prepackaged ISOs that you can get (search Google) with all this pre-configured.
BTW - what Virtual platform is your server on? Xen, OpenVZ or Hyper-V?
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