[asokoloski]

I had a similar reaction, after trying out Ansible at my last job. We ended up switching to fabric, which is all in Python. It was mostly good but had some awkward warts, which it seems that they've mostly addressed in fabric2. Anyway, it might be worth a look, based on my understanding of your use case.

[mindslight]

Fabric seems more down to earth, but doesn't itself solve the problem of actually defining the configuration of each host.

Having said that, I am to the point where it would be really nice if my ssh pushes ran in parallel, which is one of those robust niceties you give up by going your own way. So I'll have to revisit Fabric because it would be complementary - thanks for the reminder!