ZFS based small scale configuration

In the last few weeks I've been looking into setting up a small to-the-metal hypervisor lab. It would be my first. I've looked at SmartOS and ESXi. Now Proxmox came to my attention and my interest was aroused after watching this Let's talk Proxmox video on YouTube, where ZFS is talked about, and in particular ZFS snapshots for backup.

Hardwarewise I have a HP N54L Microserver with 16GB RAM and four 3 TB disks. SmartOS requires Intel VT-X with EPT, which the N54L, having an AMD CPU doesn't support, while ESXi doesn't support ZFS. This is where I hope Proxmox will fill the gap. Do I understand correctly that Proxmox doesn't have those limitations and will allow for using this hardware with ZFS and KVM?

In order to leverage ZFS snapshots for backup I'd like to use ZFS to the metal for everything, including the Proxmox host and the VMs. For the same reason I'd like VM guests to use the the hosts ZFS filesystem to maximum extent. Is this feasible, or are there better ways to do this? Are there any guides or best practices for small scale environments such as mine that can be suggested?

I should say that I have no experience with either Proxmox, ZFS or KVM, but do use Linux extensively. This is the reason for setting up the lab.