Linux, Php, Python environment

I'm trying to set up the following environment but not sure how to accomplish it.

1 Linux based server with SSH where I can use Rsync to transfer files for deployment. On which I can run python and a MySql-Client. Should a virtual machine be set up for this?

I need Apache and Php (with standard extensions and gd). It doesn't matter if it's on the same server or if it's somewhere else as long as I can read the files on above mentioned server which symlinks to current release(using atomic deployment and symlinks to swithc release).  

Not sure how to set this up.