Before we get started there are couple of items we want to take care of.

First thing you want to be sure before we get started on setting up centos server installation is to find out what processor the machine is using.  If you own the PC than you probably already now, but if you are installing on a hosted machine you will want to check this.

At the command line, type the following

 Output:  

 this shows the server name, Linux kernel and the x86_64 (meaning a 64 bit processor)
32bit processors include: i386/i486/i586/i686
64bit processor will show: x86_64

 Why is this Important?

As you start to install and manage your CentOS installation, you will find that you need this information to pick the right software distributions that work with your server processor.