Beware the "same config everywhere" approach. It works up to a point, then it turns into a disaster. All you need is one totally broken change like "chmod -x /usr" to really make life interesting. You start bleeding machines and pretty soon you have nowhere left to host your tasks.

It's interesting, right? At first, you can handle a couple of totally mixed-up machines. Then it stops scaling and you have to start doing the whole "golden + syncer" approach.

Then you go too far and get into a monoculture. When the machines do break, it's impossible for humans to go around and fix them in any reasonable amount of time because there are too many. It's amusing when this happens and the solution put forth is "more administrative controls".