Like the previous user said ESXi installs onto bare hardware like an operating system so you would have to rebuild. The issue with that comes if your hardware will work with ESXi since its not on the HCL. If you wanted to persue this path you should check out www.vm-help.com and they have a lot of whiteboxes and non-hcl hardware that has been user tested to work at this point in time. Also vmware server or workstation would be a great way to try some development purposes. Our company bought a couple of workstation licenses and I've used it quite a bit with testing server builds, applications etc... You can build out a template and just create a handful of servers in minutes.
Unless you're looking to handle something a bit more powerful or move to esxi in the long run, for testing and development vmware server or vmware workstation (a little more powerful than server) would be great for you.
-- Kyle
"RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
