Most Secure Dedicated Web Server Setup

I am seeking a little input from others who use multi-CPU machines with large memory as web servers and mysql servers.

I will be more than happy to give additional information I might have overlooked if you need it. Just ask.

We are starting to run more and more dedicated hosts running joomla applications. I've been trying to find the very best settings for both performance and security that I can for the servers to function well specifically with their joomla applications.

Serves are not used for *anything* else at all.

The servers are strictly used to serve up web pages. No need for anything other than what apache/php, joomla requires and a few other things such as ffmpeg, etc.

I would like to remove all tools which aren't needed for such a server, leaving a bare minimum server which is less susceptible to hacking.

I've never messed with the root account so wonder if I can simply not allow any access as root other than terminal, perhaps not even su by giving another account full root access and of course, while allowing the system to continue to function properly with the many things which must run as root.

I would like to do this on all of my public machines which are of course behind firewalls. I also have load balancers and cache devices in front of the web servers but at this time, they are not activated so aren't in the realm of this question.

Development is done in a separate environment and the data is pushed to the web server via private network to the web servers. This means no need for shared tools, FTP, or anything else which users would need in a shared environment.

The servers are 8-way IBM, running linux and apache, php/APC.
Servers have 32GB of memory and I can install up to 64GB.

Databases are run on separate machines which are also dedicated only to running mysql databases. Same machines as above.

Machines all run multiple network cards bonded as a single IP.

So, my questions are;

How can I best utilize my hardware to take advantage of their memory capacities.

For example, on the web servers, I'd like to find the best settings for httpd.conf which takes advantage of the machines resources.

On MySQL servers, I'd like to do the same as the above, taking the best advantage of the hardware/memory.

For web serving and for joomla, I seek the very best security settings I can possibly get. I say best because since they aren't used by users, there is no need to have a lot of tools and access to these machines so it should not be a problem to tighten these machines up a great deal.

Any input from those who have such experiences would be very welcome as I've been finding no one place for help on this.