I use (my own tool) Slaughter for configuring about fifteen servers. The vast majority of configuration changes are:
* Upload/update a configuration file, and if it resulted in a change then restarting the affected service. * Append a line to a file, if it is missing. * Search/replace a pattern against a file and do something if that resulted in a change.
So yes, add the ability to install/remove a native package (be it a .deb, .rpm, or whatever) and you've got a lot of power.