Looking for Affordable Configuration Management Tools

Just to clarify, open-source Ansible is still Ansible. So, there’s no difference between the open-source version and the paid one in terms of bugs. It’s actually pretty reliable! You might want to try using Ansible directly via the command line instead of AWX, which can be a bit too complex for many use cases. If you give Ansible just an hour of your time, you might find it quite straightforward. And if it doesn’t fit your needs, there are plenty of other tools out there you can explore. Here’s a good starting guide: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/getting_started/index.html

Oh, and about AWX—there’s also this UI called Semaphore. It seems to be a UI for Ansible but also supports deploying and executing OpenTofu and PowerShell scripts. Maybe it’s worth checking out if you’re looking for versatile options!

Yeah, if you haven’t already checked it out, Terraform is great for basic management automation as well. With so many VMs, it’s also a good idea to think about putting your configurations in Git for Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Configuration as Code (CaC). Set up Terraform or OpenTofu to provision your VMs and use Ansible for configuration management. That way, you can automate almost everything to the point where you can rebuild your homelab easily! Just remember to keep your data backed up too.