Testing - the easiest way to keep your environment updated

Could you share your experience with keeping your testing environment updated? I am using lots of virtual machines locally and in Vcenter. I need to keep my environment updated (e.g. dependencies like databases or tools which I`m using). I also have to update really often a software which I am testing. I have some bash/powershell scripts which I run in each machine, but it is not quite comfortable (have to log in to each machine). I am thinking about another option:

• ansible: In that case I have playbook to keep my env updated, and another one to install software to test it
• jenkins?! - not sure about that approach. Can I use Jenkins for that?

I really like and need that approach which don`t required lots of dependencies, which is easy with maintaince.

Thanks.