VIC containers for me - a full VM is a bit overkill for something this light :)
What's your setup like?
I use VMWare workstation pro- I have Windows Enterprise 2019 LTSC N installed and snapshotted to a base VM.
Any time I need to do anything, I will full clone the base; with a decent SSD it takes maybe 10 seconds for the full clone and I have a full OS.
Actual ESXI on a decently powerful (33 cores, 512 gigs) machine. VMWare’s been really good to me, minus some points for occasional stupidity on upgrades.