It's based on Windows 8 Developer Preview. It's just that, a preview, and has many bugs in it that will be worked out in time, but right now it isn't a stable release and you may experience crashes ranging from mild to fatal that hose the entire dual boot setup and make it unrecoverable.
The dual boot installation is done in VMware, a virtual machine application that has not been updated to support Windows 8 releases. That's not a knock against VMware, as in time they will update the software, just a fact that it isn't yet designed to do what I'm asking it to so glitches are expected.
I have experienced some crashes in use, especially regarding the new dual booting procedures, but fiddling with the recovery tools have for the most part been successful in remedying any problems. These crashes are a result of the Developer Preview, not the virtual machine software.
My recommendation is that under no circumstances should you try and set up a dual boot installation with your primary system. A virtual machine is the only method I recommend at this time.

Windows 8 Developer Preview introduces some long overdue and welcome changes to the way dual booting is handled. Because this release is an early preview of Windows 8, I strongly advise against dual booting it on your primary system, but setting up a virtual machine to get a taste of the revised dual booting procedure is perfectly safe.

For the purposes of this tutorial I'm going to assume you already have a Windows 7 virtual machine set up and ready to go in VMware, as shown below. I'll pick up from that point, showing the screens and changes necessary to install and implement dual booting with Windows 8 Developer Preview.

To get started, make sure the Windows 7 installation is highlighted in VMware and click the [Edit Virtual Machine Settings] link at the top left of the program.

After you click to edit settings in the previous step the Virtual Machine Settings screen will open as shown at left. The first step is to add a hard disk where Developer Preview will be installed. Make sure Hardware tab is selected then click once on Hard Disk (SCSI) followed by clicking the [Add...] button. The Add Hardware Wizard will open. Click [Hard Disk] in the wizard followed by the [Next] button.

The default setting is [Create A New Virtual Disk] and unless you already have a virtual disk created somewhere that's not being used, stick with the default. Unless you are very experienced and understand the damage that's easily done by selecting [Use A Physical Disk], stay completely away from this option.

Disk type is the next step. Unless you have a specific reason not to, go with the SCSI recommended option.

Specify Disk Capacity - VMware recommends a 60GB disk size for Windows 7. The absolute minimum for 32-bit Developer Preview is 16GB and for 64-bit it's 20GB.

Sixty (60GB) doesn't seem that unreasonable, especially if you make the file dynamically expandable instead of allocating all the space initially.

I did use the default 60GB, but where the default is to split the disk into multiple files I selected store as a single file.

You have the option to change the file name for the new hard disk and can change the storage location -- or just accept the default and all will be good. Click the [Finish] button and the Add Hardware Wizard closes.

After the hard disk creation finished, we are back in the Virtual Machine Settings window. The new hard disk that was created is now visible in the left pane. At this point we need to make a change to the CD/DVD (IDE) drive, so click it one time in the left pane and then look at the [Connection] section in the right pane.

Because I'm going to install from the Developer Preview .iso file rather than from a bootable DVD, select the radio button next to [Use ISO Image File], click the [Browse] button and browse to the .iso files location, select it and it will be shown in the [Connection] section.

That's it for settings changes in preparation for the dual boot installation. Click [OK] to return to main VMware console view.

Note: After the new installation completes, return here and select the [Use Physical Drive] radio button.

Back in the main VMware console view it's time to start the installation. The default boot device order may or may not need to be changed depending on how it was set in the Windows 7 virtual machine. I'm going on the assumption it will need to be reordered for this tutorial. This change needs to be made in the system BIOS so follow the diagram at left to boot into the virtual machine BIOS.

Inside the BIOS, set the CD-ROM Drive to be the first boot device and the Hard Drive as the second boot device. Exit the BIOS, saving your changes and the virtual machine will reboot. Watch the screen for the old familiar "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD drive..." and do so when it appears.

The Install Windows screen appears -- you've seen all this before ---

-- making sure you choose the Custom (Advanced) type of installation ---

-- and finally, making sure you select the new hard drive that was created specifically to hold the Windows 8 Developer Preview.

Once you click the [Next] button it's just a matter of waiting for the installation to finish. You'll have to run through the initial settings screens for Windows 8 Developer Preview before you're brought to the new Metro desktop. There are a lot of changes and additions to the new dual boot screens and available options. Have fun exploring.

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Testing Operating Systems On A Primary System

Here's a method I use for testing operating systems and other software on a primary system without impacting the current primary operating system.

System Mechanic® - Fix and Speed Up Your PC...

Set BIOS to Boot from CD/DVD Drive

For those who aren't familiar with the steps involved, here's a generic guide to the procedures.

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