I use vagrant to virtualize my work environment.
However I think it would be cool to have some kind of a headless SBC with a quad core processor (maybe i7) where I could have everything hosted.
This way I would have very good performance and still keep it separate from my main computer.<p>I have considered using a cloud provider, but i like having the computer on my desk, and also using a cloud host I have to think a lot more about security than if it lives inside our firewall.
You just want another box to run a hypervisor on, so you don't have to juggle VMs on your main box? That's not a bad idea. I don't see why you need a single-board computer in particular. Any small form factor (SFF) PC would work. You could look at home theater PCs for ones that are especially made to be quiet, although they tend to be underpowered.