Managing node client deletions as you recreate them

hi. hosts are expenable, right? i deploy a host, i kill it and redeploy
it. yay automation. yay cookie cutters.

how are people solving the issue where you need to first run a “knife
client delete -y hostXYZ.chefruulz.com” before you can redeploy that
same host and have it successfully re-register with the chef-server?

my environment is ec2. i’m slowly moving my team away from using
ElasticFox to launch instances, and moving toward launching them
using a smarter script that runs ec2-run-instances command (i’m not yet
ready for knife ec2).

right now i’m knife client deleting by hand, but that blows. i think
i’d rather not add crisco and fishing line to my launch script that
calls the knife client delete first. doing so might involve using ssh
as an API (blech). or maybe calling knife client delete might not be
so gross. i haven’t decided yet. this launch script isn’t even the
final solution, but it’s a step i’ve taken as an incremental improvement.

what smarter ways y’all’re using? even tho i’m not yet using knife ec2,
don’t hesitate telling me solutions that use it :>

tia,
kallen