Okay, I'm new to VMware (just bought Workstation last week with the academic discount

) and I'm also new to Linux. Just for grins, I want to configure centOS to be my home server and have my other VMs (openSUSE 11 and XP) authenticate. Nothing fancy really, I just want to gain some experience configuring servers and managing users. I found this article to be a promising start:
The Perfect Server - CentOS 5.3 x86_64 [ISPConfig 2] | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials
Does anybody have any suggestions (i.e. choosing NIS or LDAP, enabling Kerberos, etc.)? How are your VM servers configured and why?