[JesseK]

I've deployed KVM (Linux) in a production environment and poked around with VMWare/VirtualBox. VMWare is decent for rendering a 3D model in a VM, but it's $180 per person. VirtualBox is free, and while its OpenGL rendering within a Linux Guest on a Windows Host is pretty good when in "Seamless" mode (a pretty sweet mode btw), I'm not sure what the results will be on a Mac. You can try it yourself (VirtualBox is free, and so is Linux) if you want to test performance. You'll also want to be careful of where the data gets stored. Last year we used a Google Code repository with TortoiseSVN to share our files.

I'll also say that I have no experience with using a Mac as a host for VM's, so I don't know if the video performance is on par with what's needed.

32GB flash drives are s-l-o-w when installing an OS -- be patient.