I have two tools that I am extremely happy with and use regularly to deal with these sorts of scenarios: Capistrano - http://www.capify.org http://www.capify.o

I have two tools that I am extremely happy with and use regularly to deal with these sorts of scenarios: Capistrano - http://www.capify.org http://www.capify.org Puppet - http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet They may not be completely fitting depending on what you are doing, and they both require some understanding of Ruby. In general, though, these tools have proved invaluable for me.