You can test code but you can't test config

Integration machine. Make sure that your QA machine is reflected onto an intermediate machine that lets your coders perform unit tests on to shake out the configuration differences between Dev and Live. This way, when QA comes up with a bug, you have a degree of confidence that it doesn't have to do with configuration.

You are correct that you want to move to a configuration management system like ansible. I wrote up a tutorial on configuration management that has automated tests at every stage and has the student write some tests.

https://amfarrell.com/saltstack-from-scratch/

I should sit down and put more emphasis on testing when I have more time, but if you work through that it will teach you the basics of configuration management and get you to doing a deploy of django+postgresql+gunicorn+nginx on a digital ocean machine.

Serverspec [0], Infospec [1]

+ QA environment mentioned by mimo77

[0] http://serverspec.org/ [1] https://www.chef.io/inspec/