I use ESX to consolidate different servers and test environments at home so I don't have to pay a huge power bill for lots of boxes. The issue you may encounter there is performance, and with ESX the backend is dedicated to VM's and you can only access them from a different device as a frontend. VMWare workstation is fine if you are looking to do everything locally on a machine. The other thing to consider is nComputing's zero client solutions, I have used them for both business and home use, the L300 is a pretty sweet solution and will work on both windows and linux platforms. You can also combine nComputing and VM's on ESX which is how I've done it, it's a pretty sweet setup.
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I use ESX to consolidate different servers and test environments at home so I don't have to pay a huge power bill for lots of boxes. The issue you may encounter there is performance, and with ESX the backend is dedicated to VM's and you can only access them from a different device as a frontend. VMWare workstation is fine if you are looking to do everything locally on a machine. The other thing to consider is nComputing's zero client solutions, I have used them for both business and home use, the L300 is a pretty sweet solution and will work on both windows and linux platforms. You can also combine nComputing and VM's on ESX which is how I've done it, it's a pretty sweet setup.