Edit: Bit the bullet and bought myself this bundle pack from Leanpub: https://leanpub.com/b/vagrant-ansible/ - Vagrant looks like a great tool to have under my belt. Ansible also looks extremely simple compared to Chef and looks like Vagrant and Ansible compliment each other beautifully. --- I guess this a good a place as any to ask, pardon my ignorance. What part of the workflow does Vagrant solve exactly? For examp…
I personally hate have long running processes always on in the background of my host OS. It slows things down, and it's not the purpose of your OS. You end up suing a non-standard OS (wayyyy different than production, especially on your Macintosh where the file system isn't case sensitive, to give 1 example).
Some people "need" to install software directly on their host OS because VM's take up too much battery power and they often work too far from an outlet. That can make sense, but I still cringe at the idea.
I think Docker provides the best of both worlds here. We have real isolation from our host OS without having to virtualize an entire OS - It even removes a whole layer of battery-eating virtualization! (Hypervisor, I believe)
Docker (for local development) will let you get very close to your production OS while still being easy to use and (relatively) light-weight.