I would like to create my own private email server and have found many tutorials that uses various installations of Linux. Our thoughts are to build a dedicated server but we want to leave room for expansion. This means we would like to run Both a Microsoft based installation and a Linux installation.

I am thinking a Virtual Machine may well work as the service isn't that resource intensive. We would install the Microsoft OS as the main OS and install Oracle VM VirtualBox. Then install the appropriate version of Linux on it. Once done we can follow the steps and get the email service running on it.

Has anyone attempted this? If so what was your experience with this type of setup.