Sounds pretty pricey, but it’s hard to say without being there.

Not without alot of messing around, I’d just stick with 2.5.

You can go down to literally a usb stick or even micros card if they support it. Esxi works on an SD card with a few config tweaks.

What is your job? Do you have exposure to life cycled hardware?

Too long

You’ll need inlet and outlet, not just outlet. Also, look at your server power usage too, drive don’t generate newrly a much heat.

Yes because they’re cheap.

Doing it for the experience and lab of it? Sure.

Doing it to actually use, fuck no. Email is the most vulnerable part of any org. You need to have a proper spam filter, dmz, web domain, several DNS records, certificates etc in order for mail to even flow in and out. It’ll just be a headache and there are so many free options.

If you want your own special email domain, get suite for 1 person at 12 bucks a month and have it all just work.

Why make it complicated? Throw an ssd and at least 8gb of ram, should be fine to run windows 10.