Here's a question for you: if your VPS would die today, what would it take to get a new one up and running? Create a user? Install some packages? Add an nginx config file? Maybe add a line or 2 to ~/.ssh/authorize_keys?
If you didn't have a checklist, could you remember all the steps to get the machine back to its current state? If not, you probably should have a checklist. Chef/Anisble/Puppet lets you make such a checklist, but that checklist is actually runnable so that if you needed to bring up a new box it's just one command line away.
So, are you missing out? Maybe. It depends on how complicated your setup is. My experience is that over time, the complexity tends to go up. It seems like extra work up front to make all your configuration changes in some weird extra layer, but as your changes grow and grow it becomes nicer and nicer to have them all listed and documented.
An analogy: it's kind of like programming with no source control. You can do it, especially if you're not collaborating, but as time goes on it becomes more and more cumbersome to work without it.
If you didn't have a checklist, could you remember all the steps to get the machine back to its current state? If not, you probably should have a checklist. Chef/Anisble/Puppet lets you make such a checklist, but that checklist is actually runnable so that if you needed to bring up a new box it's just one command line away.
So, are you missing out? Maybe. It depends on how complicated your setup is. My experience is that over time, the complexity tends to go up. It seems like extra work up front to make all your configuration changes in some weird extra layer, but as your changes grow and grow it becomes nicer and nicer to have them all listed and documented.
An analogy: it's kind of like programming with no source control. You can do it, especially if you're not collaborating, but as time goes on it becomes more and more cumbersome to work without it.