Thanks for your quick reply.
You said: "all of the processes for a cluster are running on a single machine." In a single machine, but may be in different cores?
If I install 4 VMs on a Windows 7 machine with 4 cores, each VM will be guaranteed to run on its own core? Well, I am a newbie, and I'll probably stick to the sandbox for a while, but just curious.
Thanks again.