If I create a compatible group of resources I can then manipulate group members in various ways because they have the same resource type. As an example, performing a plugin config update for a group of JBAS servers, setting the shutdown method. If I attempt to do this when one or more of the resources is unavailable it will almost certainly fail. The failure generates a massive stack trace, displayed in the update detail for the failure, that I think boils down to the resource being unavailable (is this is specific to JBAS servers?). Also, it can cause a long "in-progress" state for the update. Perhaps the user should be warned before, or prevented from, performing certain manipulations on groups with mixed availability.
we should talk about how to visually / verbally tell the user what's going on here for 1.2
Although there may still be some weaknesses here the overall mechanism is much improved with asynch update execution and lots of othr improvements to config update. Let's close this and defer to other, future jiras, if any.
This bug was previously known as http://jira.rhq-project.org/browse/RHQ-375