[lusis]

The correct answer to this entire question is "yes". Use whichever tool encourages you to adopt proper configuration management.

Yes, there's a gap that the current crop of CM tools don't address (and why we see new versions of capistrano clones with a bit of system management sprinkled in) but the three major tools right now - Puppet, Chef and CFengine are all at a state where they address 95% of the use cases for system management and automation.

[lobster_johnson]

What do you consider to be missing in the current configuration management tools?

[lusis]

It's not so much what I consider to be missing as what others don't seem to be finding in them that encourages them to bolt on functionality into "incompatible" tools:

http://blog.lusis.org/blog/2011/08/22/the-configuration-mana...