Nice, thanks... this weekend will do a trial with a 4 core, 4 GB VM (disk I have plenty, but I wanted to understand how far can I plan something if committing). If that plays out nicely, I will be grabbing a new CPU/board/ram for a nicer thing.
15GB for a start is not that bad (assuming it has already all the previous history of hive-engine)... so, hopefully not going to be 30GB next week... that kind of growth would be already hard for me to sustain.
Thanks for the guide too... helps speed up stuff.