You may want to try VMware-player if you, (like almost everyone else) preferred 1.x to 2.x. The later versions of player are more like 1.x, allowing you to install an operating system from ISO or whatever, and work quite well with 64 bit CentOS.
If you want automation, forget player. Current versions are distributed as installer scripts, not rpm, and I don't think they have fixed the problem/feature that prevents running the script non-interactively.