Our experience with puppet at Hipmunk was dreadful. The configuration language is clearly designed to cause maximum pain.
We have since switch to Fabric http://fabfile.org, and are much happier.
We have since switch to Fabric http://fabfile.org, and are much happier.
My current workflow for managing systems does use Fabric however. I maintain configuration using a custom framework and work under git/hg -- Fabric tarballs the tip, syncs the tarball to several dozen servers, and then runs and my configuration module on each server. I did use a bash script previously though.
We are in the process of moving away from Capistrano to a system where code is automatically deployed when a new release is tagged. The deployment system is automatically managed with Puppet and everything is monitored with Nagios.
Fabric does what we need it to do for now for provisioning & deployment. And frankly you can make it do whatever you want. "Programmatic use of SSH" isn't something to be scoffed at; it's simple yes but it also lets you do whatever the hell you want very simply.
More info after slide 42 here: http://www.slideshare.net/ffunction/fabric-cuisine-and-watch...
The former are pull management, eg nodes request configuration. The latter are push management, eg main server pushes to nodes.
My main concern is that you did not point out your requirements. So you leaped from one technology to a different one because puppet was 'maximum pain'.