Vagrant

TotT 2014

System Virtual Machines

"a complete system platform which supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS)"
- Wikipedia

Use Cases

• Multiple OSes
• Architecture emulation
• On-demand provisioning
• Workload migration
• Disaster recovery
• Environment consistency

Consistency

• Working with a team
• Developing across machines
• Deploying to production
• Shipping to a customer

Downsides

• Guest OS weight
• Reduced efficiency
• Resource competition
• Not entirely portable

VirtualBox

• Type 2 Hypervisor
  English: It runs VMs on your laptop.
• Manages VM images
• Runs VM instances

Vagrant

Developer-centric VM management

1. Get / create a box (i.e., VM image).
2. Write a config file.
3. Script your installs.
4. Run it.
5. Share it with your team.

Vagrant CLI

Three commands to master:

$ vagrant up
$ vagrant ssh
$ vagrant destroy

Demo: Vagrant Basics

Demo: Vagrant Basics

Vagrantfile

1. States the box to use
2. States how to configure the box (e.g., networking)
3. States how to provision software on the box

Example: Simple Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # fetches a box (i.e., VM image)
  config.vm.box = "tottbox_2013_07_31"
  config.vm.box_url = "http://static.mindtrove.info/tott/#{config.vm.box}.box"
  
  # configures it
  config.vm.network :private_network, ip: "192.168.33.10"
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8080, host: 8080
  
  # runs scripts on it
  config.vm.provision :shell, :inline => "sudo apt-get -y update"
end

tottbox

• Our Vagrant box
• Our shared dev environment
• Pre-configured with many tools

Review

• Virtual machines
• VirtualBox
• Vagrant