webeno wrote:if that's possible or recommended at all?
Of course you may use VirtualBox. But (honestly), I would buy a cheap desktop at Ebay and run a dedicated server there. I dont know, where you live, but in Germany you will get "second hand PCs" for 50,-€ or less. Linux does not require modern hardware, many distributions are running flawlessly on old hardware environments. A linux testserver does (by far) not require hardware ressources like Windows or OSX.
An old Pentium III (or similar) with 1Gb RAM (even 512MB will do it) and a 50GB HDD is Ok.