Create and manage virtual machines with Vagrant

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Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases production parity, and provides an end-to-end VM management tool on your terminal.

This document shows how to install Vagrant and create virtual machines (VM).

Install

Download Vigrant and unzip the file in the location the you want i.e. /home or /opt. To use Vagrant, we need VirtualBox to be installed first. In Linux (Ubuntu) terminal we can use:

sudo apt install virtualbox
wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/2.2.10/vagrant_2.2.10_linux_amd64.zip
unzip vagrant_*_linux_amd64.zip -d ~/vagrant # we used home directory here
echo "alias vagrant='~/vagrant/vagrant'" >> ~/.bashrc # add vagrant command to terminal

Make sure to update 2.2.10 with the latest Vagrant version. Note that installing VirtualBox required root access but using it doesn’t need that privilege.

Boxes

Boxes are the package format for Vagrant environments. These are actually OS images that we need to create a VM. Vagrant boxes are available in Vagrant Cloud. To create a VM, we need to know the box USER/NAME or URL. For instance, hashicorp/bionic64 is a basic Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit box that published by HashiCorp (the makers of Vagrant).

First VM

To create your first VM, go to the directory that you want to create the VM and enter:

cd ./path-to/my-first-vm
vagrant init hashicorp/bionic64

To setup a basic Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic) 64-bit VM. Start the VM by:

vagrant up

And login to the VM by:

vagrant ssh

Note that vagrant ssh is the same as ssh -p <port> vagrant@localhost. Where port can be found by vagrant port command and the password is “vagrant”. By default, username and password are “vagrant” but we can add other users with new passwords after login to the VM by:

sudo adduser <new-username>

We can logout by logout command or Ctrl + D. Also, we can suspend or resume a VM by vagrant suspend and vagrand resume commands. And we can stops and deletes all traces of the vagrant machine by vagrant destroy command. Finally, we can start the VM again by vagrant up.

Commands

Vagrant has set of commands to run and manage VMs. Use vagrant --help to see list of the common commands and their description. Each of these command has some subcommand that can be found by vagrant --help <command> for example vagrant box --help shows available subcommands and options for box command.

vagrant init USER/NMAE # initialize a new vagrant env by creating a Vagrantfile
vagrant up # start/restrat and provision the vm
vagrant halt # stop the vm
vagrant destroy # stop and delete the vm
vagrant provision # provision the vm
vagrant reload # restart the vm and load new Vagrantfile configuration
vagrant suspend/resume # suspend/resume the vm
vagrant status # status of the vm
vagrant ssh # connect to the vm via ssh
vagrant port # info about guest port mappings
vagrant box add USER/NAME # add a box without initializing (without creating a Vagrantfile)
vagrant box list # show list of boxes
vagrant box outdated --global # check boxes are update
vagrant box remove USER/NAME # remove a box

Vagrantfile

Vagrantfile is a text file with Ruby syntax, which has all the information about configuring and provisioning a set of machines. When you initiate a VM by vagrant init hashicorp/bionic64, a Vagrantfile is creating by default such that:

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

# All Vagrant configuration is done below. The "2" in Vagrant.configure
# configures the configuration version (we support older styles for
# backwards compatibility). Please don't change it unless you know what
# you're doing.
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # The most common configuration options are documented and commented below.
  # For a complete reference, please see the online documentation at
  # https://docs.vagrantup.com.

  # Every Vagrant development environment requires a box. You can search for
  # boxes at https://vagrantcloud.com/search.
  config.vm.box = "hashicorp/bionic64"
  
  # Change the hostname from vagrant.
  # config.vm.hostname = "new-hostname"
  
  # Disable automatic box update checking. If you disable this, then
  # boxes will only be checked for updates when the user runs
  # `vagrant box outdated`. This is not recommended.
  # config.vm.box_check_update = false

  # Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
  # within the machine from a port on the host machine. In the example below,
  # accessing "localhost:8080" will access port 80 on the guest machine.
  # Note: This will enable public access to the opened port
  # config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080

  # Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
  # within the machine from a port on the host machine and only allow access
  # via 127.0.0.1 to disable public access
  # config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"

  # Create a private network, which allows host-only access to the machine
  # using a specific IP.
  # config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.33.10"

  # Create a public network, which generally matched to bridged network.
  # Bridged networks make the machine appear as another physical device on
  # your network.
  # config.vm.network "public_network"

  # Share an additional folder to the guest VM. The first argument is
  # the path on the host to the actual folder. The second argument is
  # the path on the guest to mount the folder. And the optional third
  # argument is a set of non-required options.
  # config.vm.synced_folder "../data", "/vagrant_data"

  # Provider-specific configuration so you can fine-tune various
  # backing providers for Vagrant. These expose provider-specific options.
  # Example for VirtualBox:
  #
  # config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
  #   # Display the VirtualBox GUI when booting the machine
  #   vb.gui = true
  #
  #   # Customize the amount of memory and cpu on the VM:
  #   vb.memory = "1024"
  #   vb.cpus = "2"
  # end
  #
  # View the documentation for the provider you are using for more
  # information on available options.

  # Enable provisioning with a shell script. Additional provisioners such as
  # Ansible, Chef, Docker, Puppet and Salt are also available. Please see the
  # documentation for more information about their specific syntax and use.
  # config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
  #   apt-get update
  #   apt-get install -y apache2
  # SHELL
end

We can modify the Vagaratfile and reload the VM by vagrant reload or create our template file including all configuration that are needed. If a Vagrantfile is available, We can start the VM by running vagrant up command.

In general there are three types of Vagrant configs:

config.vm: modify the configuration of the machine that Vagrant manages
config.ssh: relate to configuring how Vagrant will access your machine over SSH
config.vagrant: modify the behavior of Vagrant itself