Pearls of wisdom?
As far as hardware goes, I'd suggest 1 core, plus another one for each VM you plan to run and as much memory as you can afford. As a start, reckon on 2GB + 1GB per VM. Add more as the fancy takes you.
> What about the choice of Hypervisor
OK, as you say that you're "playing" I'd suggest you get straight on and ... play.
A quick google search of all the technical terms you have mentioned will give you all the alternatives and possibilities you are searching for.
Start off by grabbing copies of all the *free* bare metal hypervisors and giving each of them a test drive. After that, load up whatever O/Ss you are licenced for and try out the other VM environments you can download.
At some point you'll either find a product (there aren't that many) that jumps out at you and seems to do all the things you want - hopefully part of your experience gaining process will allow you to come up with a list of features you value - or at least fail to tick the fewest possible boxes.
At that point, I'd be interested to hear how you got on.
The only thing to remember is that if you don't know where you're going, you'll never know when you've arrived. So apart from playing around, you could help yourself by taking half an hour to work out what your goals are: learning, running some "production" services, gaining some marketable experience or whatever.
Have a nice play.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
