Multivax.ca

[...] a Server 2008 Core installation, without any installed roles or extra features, still has disk and memory requirements that handily exceed a full Windows 2000 install. Server 2008 R2’s memory consumption is somewhat lower (I estimate about 30% lower than Server 2008 before roles and features are installed), but disk requirements remain high. Microsoft says there are still about 600 interconnected DLLs and other binaries, totaling hundreds of megabytes. None of these could be safely removed without causing other parts of the system to break. Even Mark Russinovich, widely regarded as one of the world’s top experts on Windows internals, admits that they still can’t predict what exactly would break.