vCD is possible as soon as you have a vSphere environment. We need shared storage to turn on DRS, but it doesn't matter the type (NFS, iSCSI, FiberChannel).
I'd really suggest looking up blogs/forums on white-boxing ESXi or cheap & compatible servers. Even some of the vMUGs have white-boxing sessions if they are in your area. I attended one in Indianapolis where it was just open discussion on home labs.