Specifications

Installer caching
Instead of using a binary image to install the system, whatever bits were
used at boot time are cached to the system. This caching reduces installation
problems caused by accessing installation files across networks that are
under load.
NOTE Scripted installations cannot PXE boot a server and then obtain the
binary image from some other form of media.
Changes to partitioning
of host disks
All freshly installed hosts in vSphere 5.0 use the GUID Partition Table format
instead of the MSDOS-style partition label. This change supports ESXi
installation on disks larger than 2TB.
Newly installed vSphere 5.0 hosts use VMFS5, an updated version of the
VMware File System for vSphere 5.0. Unlike earlier versions, ESXi 5.0 does
not create VMFS partitions in second and successive disks.
Upgraded systems do not use GUID Partition Tables (GPT), but retain the
older MSDOS-based partition label.
VMware vCenter Server
Appliance
As an alternative to installing vCenter Server on a Windows machine,
vSphere 5.0 provides the VMware vCenter Server Appliance. The vCenter
Server Appliance is a preconfigured Linux-based virtual machine optimized
for running vCenter Server and associated services.
vSphere Web Client
The vSphere Web Client is a server application that provides a browser-
based alternative to the traditional vSphere Client. You can use a Web
browser to connect to the vSphere Web Client to manage an ESXi host
through a vCenter Server.
vSphere Upgrade
12 VMware, Inc.