basic server packages:

apt-get install ipset iptables mc tmux screen htop bash-completion rsync iptraf ifstat sysstat munin-node monit apt-show-versions apt-utils tcpdump unzip whois rcconf tzdata traceroute less lftp  logwatch locales ntpdate fail2ban logrotate etckeeper rsync bzip2 curl gzip zip

basic WEBserver packages - jessie, nginx, php-fpm, mariadb:

apt-get install imagemagick-common mariadb-server nginx-common nginx-extras ntpdate openssh-server openssh-sftp-server php5 php5-apcu php5-curl php5-fpm php5-gd php5-imagick php5-imap php5-json php5-intl php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-memcached php5-mysqlnd php5-pspell php5-readline php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl rdiff-backup tcpdump xtrabackup 

setup tasks:

• networking
• firewall
• /etc/sshd_config
• authorized_keys
• rsync etc from somewhere (at least new packages)
• rsync data
• munin
• monit
• fail2ban

This is a good manual for upgrading debian: https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.de.html

udev (t)errors udev makes a lot of noise, if the kernel is not upgraded before the udev upgrade. the new kernel cannot be installed at that point to. the only way to fix it, is:

touch /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade

After that, udev upgrade works and a fresh kernel can be installed (e.g. apt-get install linux-image-3.16.0-4-686-pae). Upgrade the kernel before reboot

http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_remove_systemd_from_a_Debian_jessie/sid_installation