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Vagrant 1.6 has been released

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Re: Vagrant 1.6 has been released

#21

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…

There is an argument about installing development "cruft" directly on your host OS versus the use of virtualization.

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.

Re: Vagrant 1.6 has been released

#22

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…

And how is it different or better than the VirtualBox command line, which is quite extensive?

Vagrant also seems to have something in common with docker, though with VMs instead of containers, though I'm not totally clear on that either.

Re: Vagrant 1.6 has been released

#23

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…

And how is it different or better than the VirtualBox command line, which is quite extensive? Vagrant also seems to have something in common with docker, though with VMs instead of containers, though I'm not totally clear on that either.

Primarily from it's integration with provisioners (Puppet, Chef, etc, even inline shell commands), it's folder share support and the conventions you get that make it easy to build a sane lifecycle around (vagrant up, vagrant suspend, vagrant destroy).

Re: Vagrant 1.6 has been released

#24

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…

And how is it different or better than the VirtualBox command line, which is quite extensive? Vagrant also seems to have something in common with docker, though with VMs instead of containers, though I'm not totally clear on that either.

It's different and better because it moves the abstraction layer up a few notches.

First, Vagrant supports much more than just VirtualBox (maybe not a big deal if you only want to use VirtualBox).

Second, Vagrant comes with a nice configuration layer allowing you to specify what OS and VM options you want to use (maybe not a big deal if everyone in your group is already comfortable with the VirtualBox command line).

Third, it handles provisioning new VM's using the provisioner of your choice, like Chef, Puppet, regular old shell scripts, etc. (Maybe not a big deal if everyone in your group is already an expert at using the chosen tool e.g. knife).

Fourth, it wraps up all of the previous steps (plus a bunch more), so that people can just clone the current box and type 'vagrant up', and have a working copy of the production/staging/test/dev network. (Maybe not a big deal if everyone in your group is already an expert at setting up that network).

Anyway, I know that all comes off a bit glib, but Vagrant really shines in automating a bunch of not-necessarily difficult manual steps. I'm pretty sure it doesn't do anything that can't also be done through a variety of other mechanisms (being well-versed in the VirtualBox command line, for example), but so far, I've found it to be more pleasant to use than dealing with all those other mechanisms.

Re: Vagrant 1.6 has been released

#25

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…

And how is it different or better than the VirtualBox command line, which is quite extensive? Vagrant also seems to have something in common with docker, though with VMs instead of containers, though I'm not totally clear on that either.

I don't really know about VirtualBox Command Line, but from a simple URL Vagrant creates a VirtualBox instance, then after simple configurations (e.g., copying a private key), can transfer the control to a provisioning script (e.g, Ansible). You have all your server configuration in an version controlled text file, runnable with a simple command, allowing you to freely tweak your server.

Re: Vagrant 1.6 has been released

#27
I've just started using Vagrant, but am not quite sure how it relates to production.

Can I use Vagrant to build out my production server too? Or would I just use Chef/Puppet/Ansible with the same playbook/recipe on both my Vagrant powered VM and non-vagrant powered production machine?

Re: Vagrant 1.6 has been released

#28
post #27

I've just started using Vagrant, but am not quite sure how it relates to production. Can I use Vagrant to build out my production server too? Or would I just use Chef/Puppet/Ansible with the same playbook/recipe on both my Vagrant powered VM and non-vagrant powered production machine?

I believe Vagrant is for quickly and repeatably building development environments - I don't think it's meant for production.

Look into packer for building out Production images, and Chef/Puppet/Ansible for additional configuration ontop those images.

Re: Vagrant 1.6 has been released

#29

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…

There is an argument about installing development "cruft" directly on your host OS versus the use of virtualization. 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 ex…

Unless you develop natively on Linux, Docker must still run inside of a VM, so there is no real battery savings.

Re: Vagrant 1.6 has been released

#30
post #27

I've just started using Vagrant, but am not quite sure how it relates to production. Can I use Vagrant to build out my production server too? Or would I just use Chef/Puppet/Ansible with the same playbook/recipe on both my Vagrant powered VM and non-vagrant powered production machine?

I use Salt (used to use Puppet) to build out my Vagrant box(es) in development.

When I'm good to go, I use Packer with the same Salt configuration to build an image and push it to AWS/DO/RackSpace as needed. Makes it super easy to develop and deploy on exactly the same machine, and the Vagrant/Packer configurations are typically fairly minimal so there's very little set-up time once you've written out your Salt/Puppet/etc configurations.

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