mac mini quad core as a VMware esxi lab?

I was thinking of using the mac mini as a VMware esxi server home lab. The mini uses a lot less electricity than a custom built "white box" computer.

In my current esxi server, all the VMs are not stored locally, instead the are in my QNAP via iSCSi.

I was looking into the mac mini quad core ($799). I would upgrade the ram to the maximum, get a sub/thunderbolt to gigabyte nic. Then installing VMware esxi hypervisor as a "bare-metal".

Has anyone else done a similar setup?