[Sssnake]

>How do you create that initial AMI? CMs make answering that question simple.

No, they make it slower and more complex. The idea being that after you have built a config, future clones will be easier. But you already get a better solution just setting up a server and then making an AMI from it. Cfengine and friends offer quite literally zero benefits for this sort of scenario.

[falcolas]

You missed two points. How did you create that first image? Exactly what versions of packages, packages, configurations, etc were installed? Being unable to answer that question will hurt you more in the long run than you might expect.

Second, if you should move from AWS to (as an example of a second popular PAAS provider) Rackspace, how do you recreate that image? If you want to create a local VM to perform development on, how do you do that?

Now, if I were limited to just using one CMS, I might agree with you. There are some really obtuse ones out there that require a lot of learning. I don't think Ansible falls into this category. You're not writing python, you're not writing in some tool specific DSL, you're writing lists of packages, to be installed in-order. Simple and straightforward.

    - yum: name=nginx

Versus

    sudo yum -y install nginx

[Sssnake]

I didn't miss any points. Every package manager can accept a list of packages. You missed learning the most basic fundamentals of your OS. And once again, the specific tool does not matter. They all do the same thing, and they all do it in an error prone and ill-conceived way. Hell, nix is a better "CM" tool than the real ones, and it is just a package manager.