I have chosen VMWare as the base virtual machine system, but I did site that one reason was because it could be installed on a machine that did not have 64bit extensions. Well this has changed with VMWare 4. The newest version does require 64bit but it does extent the memory and CPU limitations that the server had before.

To get started with vmware, you first want to down the version that suites your needs best, for home use and learning of the basics, I recommend ESXi version 3.5 or 4.0 depending on your hardware. http://www.vmware.com/download/esxi/

After you choose to download, you want to sign in, or if you dont have an account sign up for one, it will just make life simpler.

After you download the ISO, you will want to burn it to a CD and go. You can do this easily. My lab isnt setup at this moment so I need to setup my hardware before I burn the ISO to a disk, but once its done the disk will install on bare metal so you dont need to install any additional OS with the disk.

Next post I will go into more detail such as “how to add storage array” and “how to use the damned thing”  but till i get my lab together this will work.