I am assembling a Linux box and am interested in knowing the best approach to take. For example Ubuntu vs ???. Initially I am expecting to install it on a test machine and then ultimately want create a new virtual server on a WEb server that is currently running VMware. The use will be as a WEb server only.

I have a web app currently running on a Windows Server 2008 R2 box using vb.net and Microsoft SQL Server. I am expecting to port it over to the linux box using Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Any ideas on the easiest way to do this would be very much appreciated.

This sounds like an enterprise environment situation to me, so if that assumption is correct, Ubuntu is not the way to go. That distro is more suited to home environments.

Since you're already running VMware, I'll go ahead and assume you're licensed for it... and seeing as how ESX has entered into an agreement with Novell such that you're now instantly licensed to run as much SLES as you have active licenses for VMware, that seems like a no-brainer. SLES is also the distro of choice for business users who are new to Linux, because it comes with some unique automated tool sets that reduce the learning curve. So that's a direction I strongly recommend.

MS-SQL to MySQL should be a fairly lateral move as far as the individual databases are concerned, because ultimately, SQL is SQL. Honestly, I think you'll appreciate the difference. I'm working on an app using an MS-SQL database right now, and I hate it.

VB.net and PHP are whole different animals, so good luck there. That'll probably pose the biggest challenge of the whole project.

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Thank you very much. That is exactly the information I was looking for. I do have a license for ESXi and noticed the Novell as an option to install so I will choose it. Does Novell install apache, MYSQL, and PHP by default?

No, SLES doesn't install very much by default (which is as it should be), but once you have SLES up and running, you can register the server to Novell's online update (you don't even need a key for the first 30 or 60 days, I forget which) and pull down anything you need. There's also an AWFUL lot of stuff in the install ISO, so you might all you need there.

You can obtain a permanent key from VMware.