If you want ease-of-use, running your own server is not the way to go. You can get pretty far with AWS/GCP/Azure free tier.
When setting up a server on VPS what exact 'dashboards'/'control panels' are available?
Like op, I want to keep an eye on things manually in one place, similar to what I get pre-set up in cpanel shared hosting. Disk space usage, total traffic used that month, tracking server load, pages visited, and by what IPs, etc.(ideally without using google analytics script tag on page)
I wan't to analyse the performance of my webapp really, relative to the amount of people signed up.
I am going to be using LEMP stack.
For me the 'sea of icons' of a control panel is a headache, I much prefer command line and saving my history for when I learn something crucial.
I used to be a linux shell only person but I am quite keen on having ssh windows in the IDE nowadays with git and rsync for getting code and 'assets' from dev machine to the internet. Connecting to remote databases via the IDE is pretty good too.
It is easier to Google how to do something and copy/paste command line commands than it is to follow a GUI tutorial.