I have an 8gb Linode just waiting for some administrative love.

I managed to set up my dev server on another node and it's actually worked for a few months, but I need an experienced hand to set up my production server and get it ready for prime time.

LAMP stack, nothing too fancy. Open to suggestions, but here's what I have in mind:
Apache (mpm-worker)
Php-fpm
APC
Memcache
PECL uploadprogress library
Varnish (possibly)
Packages: mod_rewrite, mod_expires, imagemagick, optipng (or similar)
Server hardening/security
No mail required

The site is a drupal 6 artist community site with mostly anonymous users at first, but logged in usage will increase over time. Will have 10-15k page views per day from the start, and could possibly double in a few months (used to have 100k per day).

Please get in touch if you have experience with server tuning and security - please include link to CV/experience, ballpark time estimate, and hourly rate.

Much appreciated.