Vagrant

Vagrant provides reproducible, portable development environments using Virtual Machines (VirtualBox, VMWare, Hyper-V).

When to Use

• Legacy/Full OS Dev: You need to simulate a full Linux Kernel or multi-vm network that Docker cannot easily do.
• Local Testing: Testing Ansible Playbooks locally on a clean VM.
• Windows/Mac: Running Linux VMs on non-Linux hardware with ease.

Quick Start

# Vagrantfile
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "hashicorp/bionic64"
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080

  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
    apt-get update
    apt-get install -y apache2
  SHELL
end

vagrant up -> vagrant ssh

Core Concepts

Boxes

Base images. Analogous to Docker Images. (e.g. ubuntu/trusty64).

Providers

The hypervisor backend. VirtualBox (default), VMWare, Hyper-V, Docker, Libvirt.

Provisioners

Scripts that run on first boot (Shell, Ansible, Chef) to set up the software.

Best Practices (2025)

Do:

• Use Multi-Machine: Simulate a network (DB + Web) in one Vagrantfile.
• Sync Folders: Edit code in VS Code on Host, run it on Guest VM.
• Consider Docker: For most “App Dev” use cases, Docker/DevContainers are preferred in 2025. Use Vagrant for “Infra Dev”.

Don’t:

• Don’t check in .vagrant/: Add it to .gitignore.

References

• Vagrant Documentation