I personally use Chef to deploy PHP-based web applications (very little ruby, only running God to be honest), and at work we deploy Python, Ruby, PHP, and all t

I personally use Chef to deploy PHP-based web applications (very little ruby, only running God to be honest), and at work we deploy Python, Ruby, PHP, and all the services and subsystems our applications require. The biggest pain is that the docs were iffy, at least for me. I wasn't the one setting up the servers at work, but when setting up a Chef cookbook for personal use, it was a pain to both learn the DSL and deal with the silliness caused by bugs that hadn't quite made it to release yet. At the end of the day though, its more just experimenting with the tools available until you're comfortable with one. You can also look into Fabric, which is a Python server automation tool.