I agree that there is convenience to the execution controls VMs provide. But if you can't repeatably and easily stand up a replacement/duplicates of a system from configuration management and backups, then you don't actually have configuration management or backups.
Sure, to be clear I'm not arguing against those things, I'm just arguing that VM level snapshots and clones are also a tool in the operational arsenal and is in fact a very popular one that works well in practice.
