I got in to Server 2008 R2 via Dreamspark and would like to start learning on it.

I don't have much option but to put it on a system sitting between the Internet and my home LAN due to electricity bills and the fact that 3 computers in an 11x11 space in 102 degree weather is pretty stygian.

Currently I use a ClearOS gateway to manage everything, what I'd like to do is take my server 2008 R2 box, which has two NICs, and drop it at the head of my network. I'd want Server 2008 R2 to ignore all traffic on the external facing NIC and pass it to a virtual ClearOS gateway, and to put all its Internet traffic through its other NIC - which will face the rest of my network and be the default gateway for it.

The theory is to keep the potentially vulnerable Server 2008 R2 install as tucked behind a Linux box as possible, without sacrificing too much performance. This is a home network that occasionally hosts dedicated game servers and voice chat servers, so most malicious activity is in the form of drive by non-targeted attacks, however, I don't trust Windows Server because I don't know the OS well enough, yet.

So, three questions: How do I do this, am I going to be reasonably more secure doing this than if I just let the Server 2008 R2 rig handle all the network traffic and DHCP (not an option), and should I virtualize the Server 2008 R2 rig instead and if so in what? (Core 2 Duo e6600 w/ 5 gigs usable RAM)