Ask HN: Advice on going from shared to dedicated server?

Hey Hackers,

I've finally built my base of hosting clients up enough to require a good, dedicated environment. I was on a reseller account which was cheap and good enough to build basic things. Just looking forward to the power of having a LAMP server of my own. Any advice?

Overview: Sounds like my new host includes a cPanel license, Centos install and remote reboot tools but it is self-managed with no uptime guarantee. Any red flags here?