[Infrastructures] state machines

[Daniel Hagerty]

 > Oh sure, I agree with that.  But let me ask you: What is more likely
 > to have the CNAME dependency problem?  A recent backup restored, or
 > an old system image with months or years worth of changes applied?
 > Perhaps you see what I'm getting at.

    You're presumably suggesting that the backup (since it's just data
at this level of abstraction) is more robust than a series of hand
crafted imperative statemnts that you execute in proper order.

    The two both have their places.  A backup is a large relatively
opaque blob; code that supposedly reproduces the backup is
introspectable in a way the backup is not.  One being better than the
other is dependant on the context of use.