Visual Studio 2010: SDK size drastically reduced

The SDK of Visual Studio 2010 is considerably reduced from its previous versions. It used to be around 100 MB in size. In Visual Studio 2010 it is around 10 MB. Because of reduction in SDK size, the installation time is reduced. The size reduction is accomplished by making the documentation and samples available online instead part of SDK. Moving these contents online give advantage to keep the contents updated all the time. The online documentation and samples are available at following locations:

- MSDN Code Gallery
- Visual Studio SDK documentation

Hyper-V

Hyper-V is hypervisor based virtualization system for 32/64 bit systems. It allows multiple operating systems to run concurrently on single host. Hyper-V is shipped with Microsoft Windows Server 2008. Windows Server 2008 can be installed as Core or Full. The Core installation have only command prompt available. It does not have GUI installed on server. Both the installations can host Virtual Machines. These machines can be maintained using System Center (SCVMM) OR Hyper-V Manager. To work with Hyper-V Manager, one needs to have Windows 7 OR Windows Server 2008 running. Hyper-V Manager is component of OS 6.0 version. To use SCVMM client there should be System Center server installed.

More details about Hyper-V can be found at following location:
- Virtualization with Hyper-V
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager