There is "CoaL", or "Cloud on a Laptop" from Joyent just to get the feet wet with Triton:

http://blog.shalman.org/running-sdc-coal-on-smartos/

this video demonstrates that it doesn't take days and the description even says it is just as suitable for bare metal as it is for VMware:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apZ-G5LwYiY