I've been successfully using ShellyCloud for couple of years. It's linux based cloud platform deployable via git push, MySQL support is also available as MariaDB. https://shellycloud.com

Running a PaaS and have tested all tools and more.

It all depends on the level of control that you want.

I would DEFINITELY recommend you using one of the new breed configuration tools out there. Specifically if you don't have much experience and want to get things done quickly, ansible would be the way to go.

Ansible is easy to learn, based on standard SSH and easy to scale (currently we configure/orchestrate over 5000 servers with it), and it will give you a high degree of control.

Besides you have tons of ready made playbooks to use:
https://galaxy.ansible.com/

Ping me if you want to dig deeper.

Pere