[falcolas]

> Have you not found this to be a problem at all?

Not myself. The VMs are never doing anything so taxing that they incur significant overhead. I can regularly keep 3-4 running concurrently without an issue.

> usefulness of Ansible for server config declines

I don't ever see this being the case. Configuration is becoming more challenging, not easier. Even if you use a tool like Docker perfectly for all of your services (which is ironically very hard without some kind of CM tool beside dockerfiles), you still have to: install packages, change configuration files, run commands, enable services, change permissions, change firewall rules, modify DB users, manage SELinux, setup log file rotation...

Servers are hard to set up and maintain in a coordinated fashion without some kind of CM tool. And while PAAS providers can handle quite a few lightweight services without requiring you to use any CM tools, there comes a point where they no longer scale the way you need them to, and you're back to provisioning VMs or even bare metal.