Ubuntu, Templates, Ansible, Puppet?

Hi sorry new here and hope this is in the correct place.

We have just started using Proxmox and virtual machines and am impressed so far. One thing that I would love to solve is being able to quickly re create machines.

I know i could take an image of the machine and i have done that but the file size is huge.

What I would like is the ability to re build a machine quickly but not have a huge file size. All our machines are Ubuntu so it feels like multiple copies of the file system is a waste.

Is it possible to create some sort of script for each machine that would set the disk size, memory, cpu ect build the machine from a single ISO and then use something like ansible to set everything else up.

I have no experience of any of these systems but do not really know which approach I should take.

Does anyone have an suggestion or tips on how it could be done.

Thanks