Vagrant

Create reproducible, shareable local development environments. Define your VM in a Vagrantfile, commit it to Git, and every team member runs vagrant up to get an identical environment.

Installing Vagrant and VirtualBox

# macOS
brew install --cask virtualbox
brew install --cask vagrant

# Windows (with Chocolatey)
choco install virtualbox vagrant

# Linux (Ubuntu/Debian)
sudo apt-get install virtualbox
wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/2.4.1/vagrant_2.4.1_linux_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i vagrant_2.4.1_linux_amd64.deb

# Verify
vagrant --version

Basic Vagrantfile

# Vagrantfile
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # Base box — Ubuntu 22.04 from Vagrant Cloud
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/jammy64"
  config.vm.box_version = "~> 20240301.0"  # pin to a version range

  # Hostname
  config.vm.hostname = "dev-box"

  # Network: forward port 3000 on VM to 3000 on host
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 3000, host: 3000
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 5432, host: 5432

  # Private network (VM gets a static IP on a host-only network)
  config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.10"

  # Synced folder: host ./src → VM /var/www/html (NFS for performance)
  config.vm.synced_folder "./src", "/var/www/html", type: "nfs"

  # VirtualBox provider settings
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.name   = "my-dev-box"
    vb.memory = "2048"
    vb.cpus   = 2
  end

  # Shell provisioner: run once on first vagrant up
  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
    apt-get update -y
    apt-get install -y nodejs npm postgresql nginx
    systemctl enable postgresql nginx
  SHELL
end

Ansible Provisioner

# Vagrantfile with Ansible provisioner
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/jammy64"

  # Ansible is installed on the HOST machine and runs against the VM
  config.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
    ansible.playbook = "provisioning/site.yml"
    ansible.groups = {
      "webservers" => ["default"],
    }
    ansible.extra_vars = {
      node_env: "development",
      app_port: 3000,
    }
    ansible.verbose = "v"
  end
end

# For environments where Ansible is NOT on the host, use ansible_local:
# config.vm.provision "ansible_local" do |ansible|
#   ansible.playbook = "provisioning/site.yml"
#   # Vagrant installs Ansible inside the VM then runs it locally
# end

Multi-Machine Vagrantfile

# Define multiple machines to simulate a real cluster
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

  # Web server
  config.vm.define "web" do |web|
    web.vm.box = "ubuntu/jammy64"
    web.vm.hostname = "web"
    web.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.10"
    web.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
      vb.memory = "1024"
    end
    web.vm.provision "shell", inline: "apt-get install -y nginx && systemctl enable nginx"
  end

  # Database server
  config.vm.define "db" do |db|
    db.vm.box = "ubuntu/jammy64"
    db.vm.hostname = "db"
    db.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.11"
    db.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
      vb.memory = "2048"
    end
    db.vm.provision "shell", inline: "apt-get install -y postgresql && systemctl enable postgresql"
  end

  # Load balancer
  config.vm.define "lb" do |lb|
    lb.vm.box = "ubuntu/jammy64"
    lb.vm.hostname = "lb"
    lb.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.9"
    lb.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080
    lb.vm.provision "shell", inline: "apt-get install -y haproxy"
  end
end

# vagrant up              — start all machines
# vagrant up web          — start only the web machine
# vagrant ssh web         — SSH into web machine
# vagrant status          — show all machine statuses

Vagrant Commands Cheatsheet

Vagrant vs Docker Compose for Local Dev