I have just purchased a HP Proliant N40L which I am intending to use as a NAS, learning tool and just in general something to mess around with. As a student via the Microsoft dreamspark program I can get a free copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 which I am using as the OS.

So that I can remote to the box from outside of my local network and so that I can stream media from it to my PS3, I have read that I need to create a static IP for the server and use port forwarding to forward to this IP so I can remote in. Is this correct?

I am not really sure how to do this and if I need to make these changes on my router configuration, on the OS or both. I am a novice when it comes to networking however most resources for Windows server 2008 R2 seem to assume a fair amount of experience already.

I realise that using this particular OS may seem like overkill for what I currently wish to do with it (stream content to other devices and backup) but as I can get a copy for free it seems sensible.

Edit:

From reading answers posted I feel I should give more information. I have now tried to add a static IP address using my router configuration settings. I have used the getmac command to get the mac address of the server. My ISP is Virgin Media and I have gone to the LAN IP section and I have added an IP address to the DHCP Reservation Lease Info. I can now use remote desktop connection internally to remote to the server (so I am assuming assigning this IP has worked). How do I configure this on the OS as well?

I am also unsure on how I would remote to this machine outside of my local network?