Having worked with both, and been intimately involved in package/repository creation and maintenance, I would have to disagree completely.

I'm not sure how you were managing it, but I've installed very large bases if redhat systems, from dozens of individually configured systems to clusters of thousands of nodes. I would say that neither are too difficult for general deployment, but redhat's kickstart system had a leg up on Debian for years.

I'd also say that the yum/rpm repository system is far easier to manage. Setting up internal repos, and making custom packages takes so much less work in the redhat ecosystem, because the sets of tools are much better integrated. Setting up a custom signed apt repo takes a lot more work, and research into various sources of documentation. Don't even get me going on trying to sign and verify a deb on it's own.