[crdoconnor]

>After all, settings needs to be tuned and iterated over, too.

That's why it has tags. So you can run just the settings states rather than running the whole 20 minute thing over and over again.

[falcolas]

You can just run portions of the playbooks, but then you lose the value of a descriptive infrastructure. What does X look like? Depends on when each tag was run.

[crdoconnor]

It shouldn't unless you're very careless. A tag that just updates all of the settings files and restarts the services should have the same effect as the full playbook run.

[falcolas]

And if you add a new machine to the cluster, which hasn't gotten all tags run against it? Or of a machine was temporarily offline when a tag was run, or...

There are many potential situations where not running a full inventory against a running machine results in a machine not being properly configured.

[crdoconnor]

>And if you add a new machine to the cluster

Then you'll probably be running the whole playbook again, including those settings changes you made before.

>Or of a machine was temporarily offline when a tag was run

Then it'll fail and give you a warning. Shrug your shoulders and run it again?

[dsmithatx]

With Tower I have dynamic inventories and variables. I can make it as descriptive as I need to and view everything in Tower.