MCSA is useful for windows and all that just as a good background but not really specific and not useful for linux.

If this will be Citrix based at all, and a lot of companies tend towards citrix solutions, the Citrix Certified Enterprise Administrator (CCEA) is useful.

On the hardware side of things, figure out where you want to focus. Most companies today seem to prefer cisco solutions, so a Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) certification is useful.

All of these have different paths, there are a lot of companies that will help you find the best path for you. Check out CompTIA.

Hope this helps. The right choice is different for everyone, but this should give you some ideas.

Good luck!!!

SQL express is a database system for storing information that your database application would use. This is the one you can put on your server and use to power your web applications.

So develop the application with web developer on your personal computer, install SQL express on your dedicated server, and when you are done then you can deploy your web application project on your web server to interact with SQL express.

You will have to consult your Dotnetnuke documentation to make sure it will work with IIS 6 and SQL express editions (I don’t see an immediate problem but you never know).

Hope this works for you. Good luck

note: putting it on a virtual machine will probably slow down the server a little, so if you have the hardware I’d put it in a box by itself and let it sit.

p.s. low cost? apache is FREE (and yes it is the de facto server, just because your not paying MS for something doesnt mean it’s not good)

If you are just getting started, start with Ubuntu for the server. As secure as Debian, but more up-to-date.

FreeBSD is told to be more secure. But that’s just because FreeBSD users are way more skilled than average. You really can’t compare it: i doubt a new user would be immediately successful in employing it.

Nevertheless, after enough time, you too might be skilled enough to switch to a hardcore server OS. Before that, stick with Debian or Ubuntu.

Do not touch windows. Because:
– its less secure
– it has more chance of being hacked just because people dislike Windows.
– it costs money (and again and again, when you need to update to a new version)
– it has less tools available
– you will learn less about how the system works and be less in control

Anything is better than Windows!

Seriously, unless you need / want Frontpage add-ons stay away from Windows and go with a Linux based solution. It runs cleaner, less resources, and better up-time. In my last job I ran a Windows and a Linux server. The Linux server would probably have out lasted cockroaches when the big blast hits but the Windows machine was always needing attention.

When working for a company where I could have people manage servers (i.e. reboot often), developing for IIS wasn’t an issue. Now that I am running my own site that need to be more stable, I’ve found it to be less effort with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

The most stable servers would be Linux or BSD. If you do an interent search a very large majority of Web servers are Linux based with Apache, Php, MySql — called LAMP.

If you aren’t really familiar with Linux or BSD then maybe you would want Windows but it. at least to me and thousands of others, is not the web server of choice.. just too many problems!