When I install a fresh CentOS VM, usually I select MINIMAL for packages. After installation, I issue the following commands:
rpm -Uvh http://ftp.riken.jp/Linux/fedora/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
to install the EPEL yum package
yum -y install mailx openssh-clients fail2ban perl wget
to install utilities I need
yum -y update
to update the system. Finally,
shutdown -r now
to restart.