Typically, a DVD cloop Knoppix image contains about 10 GB worth of programs and data, yielding an average ca 2.4x compression. For extra installs, still about 2x compression can be expected, and when much of it comes from upgrading, about 2GB used space on the persistent store may still result in an acceptable size of the new compressed image upon remastering.
If not much of it is Java (or mono) tools or packages, that is. Installs that consists mainly of jar ( war) files or other compressed formats will not compress that much, if at all. Integrating them in a compressed image doesn't help much in any way, and they are best left as is on the persistent store. For simple remastering, they must then either be hidden or temporarily removed. Linking to another permanent location is also an alternative, just remove the links before remastering.
This applies, among other things, to Eclipse derivatives, like the SpringSource tools for Groovy/Grails, application servers like jBoss server, GlassFish and Java Enterprise Edition. Such packages easily add to 1-2.5 GB, but they may still fit comfortably on a 4GB persistent store. And if they don't, either the store space can be increased, or several loop images may be used. Both approaches work just fine, what I think is less useful, is to create another cloop overlay for them.
CISCO UCSB-B200-M5 UCS B200 M5 BLADE SERVER - CAN BUILD TO SPEC
$495.00
Dell PowerEdge FX2s CTO Blade 4 Slot 2U Chassis 2x 2000W
$399.00
HP ProLiant BL460c Gen9 Blade 2x E5-2690v4 2.6GHz =28 Cores 32GB P246 650FLB
$223.00
DELL PowerEdge M630 Blade 2x E5-2680v4 2.4GHz =28 Cores 128GB H330 2x10Gb X520
$275.00
Dell PowerEdge M620 Blade Server 2 x Xeon e5 2665 8 x 16 GB(128) RAM - No HD
$59.99
HP ProLiant BL460c Gen9 Blade Server Intel Xeon E5-2698 v3 - 512GB RAM
$255.42
Sun Microsystems Blade 100 Workstation UltraSPARC-IIe 500MHz 256MB Server No HDD
$95.00
Dell PowerEdge M620 Blade Server 2x 10C E5-2690v2 64GB Ram 2x 600GB 10k HDD
$125.00
Dell PowerEdge FC430 Blade with 2 x Xeon 2680v3 CPUs
$120.00
UCSB-B200-M4 UCS Blade Server, 2x E5-2667 V3, 256GB RAM DDR4, 2x 300GB Drives
$299.99