John Hearns said...

|At the other end of the spectrum I would advise against 'everything'
|installs. Been there, done that at a customers request for a 64 node V20
|cluster. It takes a looooongggg time.

That depends on your filers, network, and hardware.

It also depends on your situation- how many nodes
of this type will you install, how much testing can
you do, how well do you know the packages, how often
will you need to reinstall or add nodes, etc.  If
you know things inside out, you won't need as much
testing.  If you don't, you'll need more.  If you
re/install a lot, testing time is well spent.  If
you will install 64 nodes of this exact config and
be done with it a while, then install 64 more, let
it be a while, etc, it may be quicker just to do
the install.