New to Windows 2012 is the ability to reduce your attack surface further by physically removing binaries from the operating system. Its really quite simple to do. Using the uninstall-windowsfeature command we append the -remove switch and that removes the install binaries from the hard drive.

If you need to add them back then, when using the install-windowsfeature command you will need to add the -source switch and make the installation source available (from a DVD or extracted ISO).

The easiest way to achieve this is to extract the sourcesSxS folder from the install DVD to a file share. The file share will need to be able to be accessed by computer accounts with Read rights. In this way, the features are available for install to any server if they have been removed.