I have a brand new Dell Poweredge T310 server with 4G ram and 1TB raid-5 hard drive in it. I Really only need to be able to run a copy of CentOS 5.4 on it, but I'm wondering if in the build process should I stick on ESXi 4 and then run CentOS as a vm? This would give me the options to roll out other VM's if I want over the life of the server (which I likely won't need) but the convenience of having them might be there.
I'm only thinking of doing this because ESXi is free, and won't add any cost to this server.
This server is going to be a domain controller for 5 workstations which will run Windows XP, as well as host 1 website with email. It will setup a few shares for samba, and have one network printer attached to it.
Any thoughts to this, or should I just put on CentOS 5.4 and be done with it? I know it's like asking what everyone's favourite colour is, but maybe a few replies will give me some ideas.
Thanks.