No not a joke. I've done this many times. Use a server image as the base which uses the latest version of the OS and core packages and then have your own custo

No not a joke. I've done this many times. Use a server image as the base which uses the latest version of the OS and core packages and then have your own custom install scripts that initialise the new server with the elements you need from the latest versions. Getting those scripts right is the key part. Once these are set up, standing up new servers and burning old ones is a cinch. Anything that's not in a repo or package needs to live off-server, possibly in a cloud