For anyone that is curious...
The student-run Oklahoma Weather Lab at OU got some new tech upgrades and a new forecasting space, of which part of what I have done is requested and set up 3 AWIPS2 workstations. We currently do not have a dedicated EDEX server (will soon though), and have been running EDEX on one of the AWIPS workstations. It isn't the most ideal solution, especially if you want to pull in a full suite of data, but if you are okay running on some minimums, it works relatively well.
The computers are Dell Precision workstations, quad core i5 3.2 GHz, 16GB RAM, 500GB HDD. So far, pulling in limited data (RAP/NAM/GFS/Satellite/limited L3 Radar), a single workstation is able to run both EDEX and CAVE, and the other two workstations then point to the EDEX on the other station. Again, it isn't ideal, but the computer hasn't exploded. and therefore I consider it a success. If someone has a beefy enough machine, they can run it just fine. I definitely do not recommend running this in a VM.