Comment 0 for bug 944325

Please forgive the ignorance in opening this bug. I've not taken enough time to research.

I'm given the impression that there is no separation in MaaS between an "instance" and a "node". I'll define these in case my noomenclature is wrong, so you can hopefully figure out what I mean.
 * node: a physical system that used for one deployment, and then re-provisioned for another.
 * Instance: a specific deployment of a node

As I understand it, essentially node == instance.
But if there is no specific entity representing instance, I think it makes some things much more difficult or impossible.

As an example:
 * How many times has node 0x3339 been deployed?
 * Do large machines get used for longer times than small machines?
 * How many total hours has user Bob used?
 * what percentage of the time are our nodes being utilized?

Maybe some of those things can be obtained more difficultly using the current system (as I understand it).

It just seems to me that node and instance are two separate things, and it would be better to model them as such.