Safe to install Desktop Experience just to run Disk Cleanup?

I'm sure many of you know about the requirement for Desktop Experience on Windows Server 2008-2012 just to run the Disk Cleanup. Personally I have only installed the Desktop Experience on RDS servers. I have a customer wanting it installed on their SharePoint Farm primarily so the WinSxS folder can be cleaned up. Are there any risks to installing the Desktop Experience on servers running SharePoint, SQL, etc?

This is sounding more like a quick fix to a disk space issue to me.

Disk Cleanup might give you a little bit of space but other than removing a Service Pack I've never seen it do very much and certainly not with the WinSXS folder.

Is this a physical box or a VM?

Jay_oasis said:

This is sounding more like a quick fix to a disk space issue to me.

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They are VMs and the customer pays for the storage. If they want a storage increase, that is not a problem for us. But it sounds like they prefer to keep the same size disk and remove Windows Updates instead.

If installing Desktop Experience and cleaning up Windows Updates is not a recommended approach, then I will go back to the customer and tell them that. But I am trying to determine if there is in fact any risk with doing this. Personally I would not do it on any of my Windows Servers that I manage unless it is a Microsoft Best Practice.

Sp33dFr33k said:

Disk Cleanup might give you a little bit of space but other than removing a Service Pack I've never seen it do very much and certainly not with the WinSXS folder.

Is this a physical box or a VM?

Click to expand...

VM

This is one of the articles the customer sent to us.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfepl...n-windows-server-2008-r2-with-new-update.aspx

You can install Disk Cleanup without installing the Desktop Experience.
It just requires a couple files copied to the appropriate locations; I've done it on a few servers and it works.

http://serverfault.com/questions/55...ndows-2012-server-without-installing-the-desk

It is safe, if you don't mind it on the machine.

This does recover a lot of disk on some machines, especially ones that have been around for a long time. I rely on this often to clean up space.