I wager that most users of test server are not setting up and retaining a cluster > size 1 as part of a test suite.  That is what vagrant, chef, ansible, and other cluster provisioning tools are for.  Interestingly; it seems as if the ring gets recreated w/ single node defaults if it is destroyed by drop & test suites I use haven't been negatively impacted by this.

I don't have a strong opinion on this matter; I'm more concerned about the need to support various source directory structures based upon frequently changing platform packaging.  Willing to revert this change.