I realize Ansible is kinda slow and can be flaky, and wouldn't use it for 500 servers. However, for one beginner VPS I think it's fine.
The fact that it's not hermetic and perfectly reproducible is a major problem for a fleet, but for single user it's a benefit. It offers a graceful migration path from a snowflake server to a managed server, and still works even if you can't manage to do 100% of the config automatically.
Comments
I realize Ansible is kinda slow and can be flaky, and wouldn't use it for 500 servers. However, for one beginner VPS I think it's fine.
The fact that it's not hermetic and perfectly reproducible is a major problem for a fleet, but for single user it's a benefit. It offers a graceful migration path from a snowflake server to a managed server, and still works even if you can't manage to do 100% of the config automatically.