Thanks for the quick reply. I will be handling the whole thing... creating the domain if going that route, setting up the servers, etc.
Where I am currently sitting is, I have this pretty loaded server sitting here on my desk. I have a fresh install of windows server 2016, with the Hyper-V role installed.
This is the only "physical" box I have to work with, aside from my workstation of course... but, I would like to get an IIS server up and running, and an SQL server, and, possibly a few other servers/roles.
Instead of just adding the IIS role to this server, I created a vm for the IIS server... thinking I could always move it, shut it down, upgrade to a physical server, or, move it to the cloud...
Same thought process for the SQL Server. Instead of install SQL Server on this box, I created a VM for SQL Server... although I havent actually installed or set it up yet. I dont know whether i really "need" a full SQL Server in a VM, let alone on its own box. So, I was siding with just installing SQL Express on the IIS Server vm and going with that for now... however, I just want to make sure that if I do that, later on, will it be hard to move from that, to a full version of SQL Server, or to the cloud.
Licenses are NOT an issue in any of this... I have full licenses to go just about any route... however, I only have one physical server box...