OK Linux pros,

Here is a good one for you. I'm a career IT/Eng professional and I need your best advice on purchasing and setting up an open source Linux server that will host my MS Visual Web applications. I'm not a newbe and have been oldschool UNIX sys admistrator, but this is something I've never done & I would like 2 get it right the first time. So far, I've been using MS Azure to host my apps. Please advise me how to replace it with my own Linux server...everything from ordering the hardware to installing all the necessary server roles. Have ISP & can get static IP address for my domanin name. Thank you very much!

Can you provide an project outline or an current network diagram?

This would help with procurement advice as well as deployment scenerios.

I can tell you what I'm doing now and what I would like to do. I'm working out of my home. I have broadband ISP but it is slow...about 1.5Mb down but I can increase that some if I need. I have been developing .NET server pages in C# under MS Visual Studio and using MS SQL Server Express under Windows 7. I have been subscribing to MS Azure to host my website and it has proven to be very costly. I just want to setup my own server here at home that will host my domain, website and everything else just like Azure does. But, I want to use Linux and its' free apps to do this, not Microsoft. That's about it. I know I can just jump right in and do this on my own but I'm in no real big hurry and wanted to get advise first. Thanks.