Your devs are not allowed admin access to the server for one simple reason: They'll screw it up.
Your job is to make sure its running right, logged, locked down, secure, organised. A Developer's job in such a place is to make it work. Making it work right isn't usually high on their list in those circumstances when they do get access.
My advice is not to pretend to be a developer (especially when you use the term in quotes like that), they will be better at their job then you are at their job - you'll be ignoring the disciplines they have that you don't - a developer won't write down every step and every file installed, but they will be much more rigorous in the internal structure of the code. So choose which role you want and focus on that, pushing the other role down to a 'I know enough to understand the challenges' type attitude.
(and yes, I generalise, but you get the gist - different attitudes are required for the 2 different roles)