UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

It is snappy, but it has a bit higher memory requirements than Linux. 1GB assigned to virtual machine is minimum for good Solaris performance. So the more RAM you will have in your workstation the better.

You'll want a CPU with virtualization/hypervisor support of course, but beyond that, hardware requirements for a small home server really aren't that bad. The more RAM the better, though that's true for almost anything.

Usually my suggestion would be to get a cheap/throwaway P4 or newer computer and install the OS on that, that's how I learned Linux to start with. But Linux seems to handle really cheap/old computers better than Solaris (or maybe I don't know the tuning tricks yet!) I had a machine with a really faulty BIOS. Linux would boot as long as I gave it 'irqpoll' but the Solaris installer just froze.

I'm not looking for old throwaway pc. I want to get a decent computer, not too expensive but one that can handle the load. My only concern is, how Solaris/Linux will do on newer hardware? I just don't want get into "driver horror" story...

That shouldn't matter if you install into a virtual environment.

Ignoring virtualization for the moment, what the CPU is mostly isn't too important. Any standard consumer PC will be x86 or x86_64. What's more important is everything else. I installed Linux back in the real early days of x86_64, on a system where the CPU was recognized but the SATA controller wasn't! I was stuck inside a tiny 2GB PATA drive until I could build a newer kernel that had Silicon Image drivers.

Corona688 already pointed out that driver issues shouldn't be a problem with virtualized environment. All I can add is that VirtualBox for many years was (and still is) developed by the same company developing Solaris, so compatibility here is just top notch

I have a question, please. Is it possible to install VirtualBox along the plain Windows installation? I'll be not the only user of the PC. I mean, can I configure a boot manager to go to VirtualBox or to Windows, or VirtualBox requires exclusive rights to booting?

VirtualBox is a Windows application . So setting up your virtual environment should look like this:
1. Install VirtualBox in Windows on your machine.
2. Create empty virtual machine in VirtualBox.
3. Install Solaris into this empty virtual machine.