You definitely can be fully in control. The question is "does what I'm doing fit within the bounding space I can exert full control over.
Right. It's probably fair to say that lots of present-era PaaS doesn't give you a large bounding space. Perhaps cloud providers always limit your space. Your own hardware can even provide limitations. But within that which you control, it's extremely important to version, package and test configuration sets .. or you wind up with a wide class of tangential issues.
Salt Cloud and the Salt Bootstrap script [are] capable of operating much closer to your aim than you give them credit for.
You may be right.
... waste any time trying to ensure I can recreate it...
If you can't automate the generation of your environment, you want to maintain the systems that you produce, and they of reasonable complexity, then IMHO you are asking for trouble in the long run. This is something that took me awhile to learn.
Right. It's probably fair to say that lots of present-era PaaS doesn't give you a large bounding space. Perhaps cloud providers always limit your space. Your own hardware can even provide limitations. But within that which you control, it's extremely important to version, package and test configuration sets .. or you wind up with a wide class of tangential issues.
Salt Cloud and the Salt Bootstrap script [are] capable of operating much closer to your aim than you give them credit for.
You may be right.
... waste any time trying to ensure I can recreate it...
If you can't automate the generation of your environment, you want to maintain the systems that you produce, and they of reasonable complexity, then IMHO you are asking for trouble in the long run. This is something that took me awhile to learn.