Installing it erases anything on the computer. You are reminded of this twice at the beginning of the installation. The installation starts off looking like a standard text-mode Red Hat installation but it asks far fewer questions. You are not asked which packages to install or for disk partitioning details. The software makes all those decisions for you.
Installation is, therefore, very quick and simple.
Because the e-smith software is meant for use on a server, it does not install the X Window System, nor does it look for exotic hardware like sound cards. This means that it should work well with pretty much any generic PC hardware. When you boot for the first time after installation, e-smith displays a management console. From here, you configure details about the network setup and method of accessing the Internet. The network configuration screens walk you through the process of setting up the e-smith server, and are quite easy, even for people with no Linux or little networking experience.