Linux deployment and redeployment

Today we have many potential methods for deploying, and just as importantly, redeploying, our servers (or our workstations, for that matter.) In my opinion, this topic was relatively unimportant in the past because most companies depended on slow deployment methods and their disaster recovery models depended on restoring, rather than redeploying, their systems. But there are so many more modern disaster recovery methods today that depend on the ability to rapidly deploy servers that we have to look at this topic with a new eye.

With modern deployment technologies and techniques, it is not uncommon to be able to deploy a new base operating system in a matter of seconds when in the past, even heavily automated systems would often take many minutes if not hours (not even considering the possibilities that would come with custom compiled systems!). Of course, computers are just faster today, and this plays a role in speeding deployments. Vendors have...