That means the VMware hypervisor will run on the real hardware (the lab machine) and we'll set up a second hypervisor in one VMware VM, which will host several other VMs.
Just to make it more interesting the host VM will be a dual-boot setup, so you can choose whether you boot into CentOS or Windows.
== Create Host VM ==
Make sure your SSD drive has a single NTFS partition taking up the whole space.
Download both the CentOS and Windows Server 2012 ISO files. Start the downloads now in case they take a long time.
Start VMware workstation and create a new virtual machine, with the following specifications:
* Advanced setup
* Hardware compatibility: Workstation 9.x
* 2GB of RAM
* LSI Logic SAS
* SCSI
* Install from the CentOS 7 iso.
* Set the hostname to matrixusernameVMhost (notice that VM is in capitals but everything else is lowercase).
Once the installation is complete your andrewVMhost virtual machine should boot into CentOS when it's powered on, you should be able to log in with your username, and browse the internet using Firefox.
== Back up the Master Boot Record ==
The MBR contains a pointer to the operating system that's loaded when the computer is powered on. We'll need a backup of the CentOS boot record because Windows will overwrite it.
* First find out what the device name is for your hard drive. You can use the <code>blkid</code> and <code>pvs</code> commands to guide you to the device name. For example a partition /dev/hda6 will be on the drive /dev/hda. You want the drive not the partition.
* Create a directory <code>lab1</code> in your regular user's home directory. Not in root's home directory.
* Use the dd command to back up the first 446 bytes of the drive into ~/lab1/centos-mbr.dd. Those 446 bytes contain the master boot record, not including the partition table. You don't need the partition table backed up.
We'll use this backup later.
= PART 2: WINDOWS HOST =