[gerhardlazu]

After 4 years of heavy Cheffing, I completely agree with most opinions expressed here. I'm pretty sure Puppet is just about the same, I have 0 experience with it though, I won't claim otherwise.

I got frustrated enough with the Capistrano, Fabric, Puppi lot that I wrote a pure bash deployment tool with a fitting name htpps://github.com/gerhard/deliver.

Ansible on the other hand is something else though. There is some learning curve, agreed, but it's not as bad as awk or sed. And seriously, if you know your bash, you will know both awk and sed. I consider my shell scripting to be above average, and I've attempted a Docker orchestration pure bash tool https://github.com/cambridge-healthcare/dockerize, but Ansible just makes the same job easier. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but before you dismiss it, give it a real chance. I should know because I have initially dismissed it thinking that it's too complex, yet another Chef circus, yada yada, but trust me - it's worth it ; )