rPath’s virtual machine for use with vmware is an excellent way of getting a webserver (with all the bells and whistles) running on your local network with very little hassle. I never liked running any type of server on my window’s box and I have found Fedora has become a bit awkward regarding stuff like php-mysql (recompiling Apache or MySQL to deal with such problems just doesn’t do it for me anymore).

You could be even smarter about it and run the virtual machine in it’s own partition and build a secure webserver connection to the outside world!