If you want your infrastructure to be simple to manage, design a simple infrastructure.
Time and time again, I see intelligent engineers design complex systems, then struggle with managing those systems. Not every system is simple, of course, but complexity will always carry a cost, regardless of the tools you adopt.
Adoption of a tool designed to simplify management of a system does not simplify that system.
I'm a strong proponent of configuration management. A well-done configuration management system makes your infrastructure easier to manage. If the infrastructure is already overly complex, though, it will be very difficult to create a simple configuration management system. I generally recommend modifying the infrastructure itself rather than creating a complex program (module, manifest, cookbook, recipe, etc) to recreate a complex setup.
