I will state now that I am no a developer I am mearly a grunt that used to keep the servers ticking over.
Persoanlly I wouldn't go for the java option either purely because its a hog on the CPU's and its a pain in the arse to admin. In the brief time we had one to play with it wasn't very stable and needed patching almost weekly and seemed to throw a syntax fit daily.
Apache never had a problem with it.
Our guys used to use pearl and a sysbase DB (which you can get for free for development)
It was predominately for document control and software testing recording and software build control, and involved a distributed moving DB enterprise.
Apart from bandwidth issues when it was time for the live DB to move to another country the whole thing was impressively stable.
The web servers were on a intel platform with redhat linux installed and the sysbase was on a solaris box. And one intel test platform with both sysbase and apache on it.
From a sys admin point of view it was brillant the solaris box needed no special attention the linux boxs needed a visit every 2 weeks, ours was the master and the replication to the local ones worked a treat. The apache was taken care of by the web master, and the sysbase was done remotely.
I don't know how this setup limits your development options but from my point of view it was a stable solution which just kept working away with minimal admin.