I'm sorry to have to say it, but the 22.04.2 server install has exploded. Unreasonably. What's going on?
I've been packaging Ubuntu-based VMs for several years, first on 20.04.x, then 22.04, 22.04.1, and now 22.04.2. These are based on the server downloads. The last two were:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 qemu qemu 1474873344 Nov 5 11:28 ubuntu-22.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 qemu qemu 1975971840 Mar 3 16:21 ubuntu-22.04.2-live-server-amd64.iso
The 20.04 server images came in at about 2 GB after initial installation, increasing to about 4 GB after adding a lot of extra custom stuff. These worked fine on a 6 GB VM. 22.04 got more difficult, but after gutting out snap final disk usage was still less than 4 GB, even with auto security updates on (which are expensive). These run fine on an 8 GB VM, with 50% of the SSD disk always free.
22.04.2 is in a completely different league. The standard server install starts out at 6.6 GB, before adding in anything else. Even the minimised install starts out at 6.2 GB, and has a habit of missing out important programs (what server doesn't need rsync and cron, for instance?)
So, basically, the base server image has more than tripled in size, and you've got to go to at least 12 GB SSD, and probably 16, to get a usable 22.04.2 server.
Why? What exactly is so wonderful about 22.04.2 that needs all this disk space?