Floating an idea: shared PTBS server for Civ IV and Civ V

[the oob]

I realize PTBS isn't available yet for Civ V but bear with me.

So I ran a few Civ IV PTBS games back in the day, some of them taking over a year. Good times, but I always had headaches keeping the server running.

What we really need, and I'm hoping (but doubt) that Firaxis themselves will provide something so that we don't need it, is a shared PTBS server. So several PTBS hosts chip in a few bucks (perhaps collecting donations from players in their games to defray the cost), and we all pay for a server somewhere which is managed remotely. Each host would have a virtual machine on this server which would run their PTBS server.

The advantages are that it should be cheaper than paying for the power to run a server all day, and should have better uptime than running your own server.

Questions for you guys:
1) Has anyone managed to get the PTBS server for Civ IV running in Linux? Not sure if Windows will be a viable option for virtual machines.
2) Would anyone have the expertise to do this? I could learn to do it but I don't have the knowledge off hand.
3) Has anyone done something like this already?

 

[the oob]

Also one option may be that we only pay for a virtual machine on an existing server, and then we all use the same virtual machine with several PTBS instances running on it. This would probably be cheaper.