Here is my horribly long powershell command to remove a bunch of unwanted features from Windows Server 2012. This saved 1.8GB of disk space. Why is under 2GB of disk space signifcant in today’s world? Well, without talking about SSDs multiply that by a 100 VHDs and you save 180GB. That’s significant on expensive SAN storage.This removes a LOT features but you can get them all back, in fact they should even download from windows update.
All of AD is removed.
DNS, DHCP, Fax
Update services
Backup
Remote Desktop services
If you want to know a full list check out this post.
Remove-WindowsFeature AD-Certificate,AD-Domain-Services,AD-Federation-Services,ADLDS,ADRMS,DHCP,DNS,Fax,Hyper-V,NPAS,Print-Services,RemoteAccess,Remote-Desktop-Services,VolumeActivation,WDS,UpdateServices,BitLocker,BitLocker-NetworkUnlock,BranchCache,NFS-Client,Data-Center-Bridging,EnhancedStorage,GPMC,InkAndHandwritingServices,Internet-Print-Client,IPAM,ISNS,LPR-Port-Monitor,ManagementOdata,Server-Media-Foundation,MSMQ,NLB,PNRP,qWave,CMAK,Remote-Assistance,RDC,RSAT,RPC-over-HTTP-Proxy,Simple-TCPIP,SMTP-Server,SNMP-Service,Subsystem-UNIX-Apps,Telnet-Client,Telnet-Server,TFTP-Client,Biometric-Framework,WFF,Windows-Identity-Foundation,Windows-Internal-Database,WAS,Windows-Server-Backup,Migration,WindowsStorageManagementService,WSRM,Windows-TIFF-IFilter,WinRM-IIS-Ext,WINS,Wireless-Networking,XPS-Viewer -Remove