Intel NUCs with ESXi are being used as home servers and in many home labs. If you are generally interested in running ESXi on Intel NUCs, read this post first. One major drawback is that they only have a single network port. There are USB NICs in the market, but for ESXi hosts they only work in path through mode. That means that USB NICs can only be used inside VMs and not for the hypervisor itself as vmnic.