Well, it depends ;) I don't think large/small is a good deciding factor. You can be large and homogeneous, or small and diverse. I think similar/dissimilar is

Well, it depends ;) I don't think large/small is a good deciding factor. You can be large and homogeneous, or small and diverse. I think similar/dissimilar is a better decider for config-mgmt vs shell-scripts. I'd argue that config-mgmt usually does a better job if your setup is large and complex. No need to write a script that checks if it needs to install a .deb, .rpm, or whatever, if your config-mgmt tools have already done that work. Also, if you build your shell-scripts right, they can ensure that your system is kept the same.