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Creating Development Environments with Vagrant Second Edition
Creating Development Environments with Vagrant Second Edition

Creating Development Environments with Vagrant Second Edition: Leverage the power of Vagrant to create and manage virtual development environments with Puppet, Chef, and VirtualBox , Second Edition

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Profile Icon MICHAEL KEITH PEACOCK
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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3 (2 Ratings)
Paperback Mar 2015 156 pages 2nd Edition
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Arrow left icon
Profile Icon MICHAEL KEITH PEACOCK
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$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3 (2 Ratings)
Paperback Mar 2015 156 pages 2nd Edition
eBook
$19.99 $28.99
Paperback
$36.99
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Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m
eBook
$19.99 $28.99
Paperback
$36.99
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Renews at $19.99p/m

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Creating Development Environments with Vagrant Second Edition

Chapter 2. Managing Vagrant Boxes and Projects

In this chapter, we will learn the basics of using Vagrant. We will take a look at initializing projects, importing base boxes to be used as our operating system, and controlling the virtual machine by powering on and off, suspending and resuming, and connecting to the box. Finally, we will also learn how to configure some of the key integration points between our own machine and our Vagrant-controlled virtual machine, including:

  • Port forwarding
  • Folder mapping
  • Networking

Creating our first Vagrant project

Now that we have Vagrant installed on our machine, let's take a look at creating Vagrant projects. Any folder can act as a Vagrant project; it only requires a special configuration file, called the Vagrantfile, within it. Vagrant uses this file to set up the virtual machines (guests) and manage their integration with our computer (or host machine).

Vagrant has a command to create a Vagrantfile within the current directory you are in, within your computer's terminal: the vagrant init command. To create a new project, let's create a new folder anywhere in our system – ideally, somewhere easily reachable, then we need to go into this folder, and run the init command:

Creating our first Vagrant project

Vagrant will then create a Vagrantfile within that folder, and show us a confirmation message:

Creating our first Vagrant project

If we take a look at the contents of this Vagrantfile file that was created, we will see a range of configuration options. Most of the options are commented out (as they are prefixed...

Managing Vagrant-controlled guest machines

The virtual machines, which Vagrant controls for us, still need to be managed and worked with. We have seen that we can start a Vagrant project with vagrant up. Let's learn more about this command, and see how to perform other operations on our new virtual machine.

Powering up a Vagrant-controlled virtual machine

As we have just seen, we can power up a virtual machine using the vagrant up command. With this command, Vagrant will first check whether a Vagrant environment has already been set up. If a previously suspended environment is found, it will resume that environment.

If the environment was not previously suspended, Vagrant then checks whether the base box has already been downloaded onto the machine. If it hasn't, it will download it, as it did for us when we booted our project with the precise64 box for the first time.

Vagrant will then perform the following actions:

  1. Copy the base box (remember, base boxes are managed globally on our...

Managing integration between host and guest machines

Without any form of integration between the host machine and the guest, we would simply have a bare bones virtual server running on top of our own operating system, which is not particularly useful. We need our own machine to be capable of integrating tightly with the guest (virtual machine).

Port forwarding

Although the virtual machine is running on our own machine, because of virtualization, it acts and behaves like a completely different machine. Sometimes, this is what we want; however, there might be times we want to have the virtual machine behave almost as an extension of our own machine. One way to do this is through port forwarding, where we can tunnel a port from the virtual machine to a port on the host machine. If, for example, we have a web server running on our own machine, we obviously don't want to map the web server port from Vagrant onto the same port; otherwise, there would be a conflict. Instead, we can map it to...

Autorunning commands

One of the key concepts within Vagrant is provisioning. This involves turning a basic virtual machine with a base operating system into a server that is ready to run for your project, meeting your requirements. To go from the base operating system to a fully fledged machine, we need to use a provisioning tool to install the software and configure the machine. There are a number of key provisioning options within Vagrant:

  • Shell
  • Puppet
  • Ansible
  • Chef

Puppet, Ansible, and Chef are all third-party tools that Vagrant supports out of the box, and provide specific languages to configure servers in an agnostic way that can be used for different operating systems. The next three chapters will discuss these tools in more detail. Vagrant also supports some other provisioning tools, including Salt, Docker, and CFEngine.

SSH provisioning involves running a series of commands on the virtual machine over SSH when the machine is first set up.

There are two key ways in which we can use SSH provisioning...

Managing Vagrant boxes

We can manage Vagrant boxes using the vagrant box command. Let's run this command with the help flag (--help) and see what subcommands are available:

vagrant box --help

Running this command gives the following result:

Managing Vagrant boxes

There are six available box-related subcommands. With each of these, we can provide the --help flag to see what additional arguments are available. The available box-related subcommands are:

  • add: This command adds a new box
  • list: This command lists all boxes installed
  • outdated: This command checks whether any boxes have updates available
  • remove: This command removes a box from the host
  • repackage: This command converts a Vagrant environment into a distributable box
  • update: This command will update the box being used by the current running Vagrant environment

Adding Vagrant boxes

The add subcommand allows us to add a new box. It takes a single argument and a number of optional flags. The argument is a name, URL, or path to a box file. If a name is provided...

Creating our first Vagrant project


Now that we have Vagrant installed on our machine, let's take a look at creating Vagrant projects. Any folder can act as a Vagrant project; it only requires a special configuration file, called the Vagrantfile, within it. Vagrant uses this file to set up the virtual machines (guests) and manage their integration with our computer (or host machine).

Vagrant has a command to create a Vagrantfile within the current directory you are in, within your computer's terminal: the vagrant init command. To create a new project, let's create a new folder anywhere in our system – ideally, somewhere easily reachable, then we need to go into this folder, and run the init command:

Vagrant will then create a Vagrantfile within that folder, and show us a confirmation message:

If we take a look at the contents of this Vagrantfile file that was created, we will see a range of configuration options. Most of the options are commented out (as they are prefixed with a # character...

Managing Vagrant-controlled guest machines


The virtual machines, which Vagrant controls for us, still need to be managed and worked with. We have seen that we can start a Vagrant project with vagrant up. Let's learn more about this command, and see how to perform other operations on our new virtual machine.

Powering up a Vagrant-controlled virtual machine

As we have just seen, we can power up a virtual machine using the vagrant up command. With this command, Vagrant will first check whether a Vagrant environment has already been set up. If a previously suspended environment is found, it will resume that environment.

If the environment was not previously suspended, Vagrant then checks whether the base box has already been downloaded onto the machine. If it hasn't, it will download it, as it did for us when we booted our project with the precise64 box for the first time.

Vagrant will then perform the following actions:

  1. Copy the base box (remember, base boxes are managed globally on our host computer...

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Description

If you are a developer who wants to have your development environment accurately reflect your live servers to tackle the ever-increasing complexity of web and software projects, this book is most certainly intended for you! It's assumed that you know the basics of Linux systems in the context of web-based projects.

Who is this book for?

If you are a developer who wants to have your development environment accurately reflect your live servers to tackle the ever-increasing complexity of web and software projects, this book is most certainly intended for you!

What you will learn

  • Integrate your own machine with the virtual machine of your development environment
  • Install Vagrant on multiple platforms such as Windows, OS X, and Linux
  • Familiarize yourself with Vagrant operations such as port forwarding, disk mapping, and networking
  • Install and manage software packages using Puppet, Ansible, and Chef
  • Set up and control multiple virtual machines simultaneously within the same project
  • Build and manage your own base box for Vagrant
  • Discover how to set up a simple LEMP server for a Vagrant project

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Mar 12, 2015
Length: 156 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781784397029
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Length: 156 pages
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ISBN-13 : 9781784397029
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Table of Contents

11 Chapters
1. Getting Started with Vagrant Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Managing Vagrant Boxes and Projects Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Provisioning with Puppet Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Using Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Using Chef Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Provisioning Vagrant Machines with Puppet, Ansible, and Chef Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Working with Multiple Machines Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Creating Your Own Box Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. HashiCorp Atlas Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A. A Sample LEMP Stack Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
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1 star 0%
C. Daniel Chase Jun 03, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Very good overview of the capabilities of Vagrant using Puppet, Chef & Ansible. I'm a Puppet user and would have liked some more detail on that side, but this will get you started.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Paul Jul 31, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2
There is only a superficial coverage of a tool that has many possible applications. The source code provided only covers one example from the book. You will be better served by learning from the HashiCorp website and/or other free resources online.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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