> If the map (serialized state) and terrain (system state) differs, is it a good idea to insist on following the map? If you're doing landscaping and the map i

> If the map (serialized state) and terrain (system state) differs, is it a good idea to insist on following the map? If you're doing landscaping and the map is your requirements, yes. And that's what infrastructure is comparable to (hence Terraform's name btw) > > Ansible will lose track of your VM if you rename it > Sure, but so will Terraform. Or worse. No it won't, because Terraform stores the underlying platform ID in it's state. It will just know there was a rename, and will inform you it plans on rolling it back to what you have requested in the configuration. It won't delete it. Ansible will want to recreate it, with all conflicts this could bring. > Ansible is a superset of Terraform. It's mostly a matter of culture which tool people choose, and which you think is the easiest to use. It's a different tool for a different job (at which it isn't great due to using a markup language which really doesn't lend itself to templating with lots of templating, and a dynamic language that suffers from version and dependency hell).