I'm sure most of you (us) run EVE-NG inside VMWare ESXi, Workstation, Fusion, VirtualBOX or whatever other hypervisor - I've also used and still do use some of these. However, by far the best bang for the buck is a bare metal install. Yeah, I have used CML2, GNS3 but no, this is not going to cover those.
I've got a NUC Hades Canyon here and I'm going to install it with EVE-NG following the HOWTO but with a little bit of experience maybe we can do it with a little finesse. The links below are nothing to do with me, I am not an affiliate nor do I make any money - the links are just to show you what was installed.
NUC: https://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC-Perf...
SSD/NVMe: https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-PR...
NEW RAM (2 x 32GB): https://www.amazon.com/HyperX-Kingsto...
OLD RAM (2 x 16GB: https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Memory...
1. Install RAM / SSD
2. BOOT with UBUNTU 16.04 LTS and install
i) Typical stuff - hostname edit (eve-ng), DHCP static etc
3. Update software etc
i) apt update/upgrade
4. Install EVE-NG PRO
i) basically follow the HOWTO
5. License EVE-NG PRO
i) simple process, again well documented