[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.