Just glanced at it and realised that I have had too much wine tonight, and its been a long day.
I will read through it at some stage, looks like some great tips although I have never dealt with Debian other than a quick consumer - different focus.
At this time I doubt I would be setting up a server like this however - most of mine are aimed at more generalist roles, and IT Staff who I need to provide how to guides for. At this level, I would be more likely to try and find a specialist rather than stumble through myself. I can see where segments might be useful however.
IPMI however is great - I am most familiar with Dell iDRAC and use it every so often.
From having setup OS X servers in the past - one thing many people setting up servers fail to realise. When your setting up a server, before any configuration patch it to the latest standard unless you have a reason not to, and then make sure your DNS is setup and functioning correctly - before anything else.
The patches will fix bugs in any configuration utilities, and the DNS if it fails to work at the start, will causes no end of problems down the line.
You should have heard a comment I received from my ISP when I said I was running a local DNS Server on a home connection one time.. They couldn't believe it. I do enough testing of systems and programs, and like to have every known device use a DHCP Reservation, and a forward/reverse lookup.
As for the XKCD.. I wonder if they are a member here....