Yes, I didn't mean to criticize the team. I'm just in the same business (making my living with what they are trying to automate) and know the hurdles they are g

Yes, I didn't mean to criticize the team. I'm just in the same business (making my living with what they are trying to automate) and know the hurdles they are going to meet. For example, my provisioning system looks nearly identical to theirs. I also have the central config file to map out roles/services/dependencies, network relations, and the CLI tools to 'manifest' a layout in the form of server instances, EBS volumes etc. And finally puppet to beat everything into shape. I can compose and deploy a production-ready runtime environment with many permutations of commonly used components in a single day. The thing is, every seasoned admin builds that stuff over the course of his career. It cuts down manual labor significantly. But you eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. Each individual component has corner cases, special optimization potential, and more than one valid operation mode (e.g. cluster vs master/slave). Automating and maintaining(!) all permutations that customers will request is nothing short of a herculean task. That's why every managed hosting provider limits itself to a tiny subset of components ("We are experts in X"), charges significant fees for their services, and refers to specialized consultants for requirements such as "let's have a hadoop cluster".