Anyone have a good introductory article about these tools (and others like Vagrant etc)? I keep hearing about them, but so far, have been managing a single VPS fine with ssh+git, with supervisord thrown in. Am I missing out by not using these?
I'm working on Ansible for DevOps[1]. You can download a preview, which has a couple good chapters on setup and initial usage. Even for managing one server, a configuration management tool is a major help; I've started using Ansible to manage my Mac workstation as well[2] (so I can keep my two Macs in pretty much perfect sync).
I only assume the reader has basic command-line familiarity, but I try to make the writing approachable for both newer admins and veterans.