HELP - installing the OS

Hi everyone. I received my server parts today and though I've built & setup several windows home computers, I've never tackled a server. I've rented several dedicated servers, but I've never owned one let alone set it up. I was hoping for a little advice.

It's an AMD Dual Opteron 248 with 4Gig of ECC DDR400 Ram and four SATA RAID Raptor hard drives.

Here are the components
newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16856152009
TYAN Transport GX28 Barebone Server-Rackmount

newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103428
AMD Opteron 248 SledgeHammer 800MHz FSB Socket 940 Processor Model OSA248AUBOX
newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16816118015
LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 150-4 64-bit PCI SATA Controller Card

newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144200
Western Digital Raptor WD360GD 36.7GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive

newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820145310
CORSAIR 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) ECC Registered System Memory Model CM72SD1024RLP-3200

and a 40x CD drive I have laying around here

Assembling it should be easy enough, but what next? I downloaded CentOS 4.2 and I'm burning the 4 CDs right now. Problem is, I don't have the slightest idea of what to expect when I stick that 1st one in and boot up the machine. Is it self explanatory? Anything special I should do?

What must I do to setup the 4 drives in a raid config instead of just 4 drives?

any optimization tips?

Will I need any additional software or is centos the OS including apache & mysql?

The co-location host will be installing cpanel so I cna control things from home. does anyone recommend a better option?

I hope you guys have some tips for me. thank in advance.

FYI - I'll be running a busy vBulletin based site on this box with a large DB. I'm still on old vb but will be upgrading to 3 in the near future.

 

 

 

 

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