Introduction to Vagrant

Introduction to VagrantMarcelo Correia Pinheiro

Friday, March 29, 13



What is Vagrant?A tool to build development environments based on virtual machines

Focused to create environments that are similar as possible or identical with production servers

Created by Mitchell Hashimoto

Written in Ruby

Initially builted on top of VirtualBox API, today offers VMWare Fusion support (as $79 per licence)


How I install Vagrant?

Get VirtualBox first

Download installer on Vagrant site (Debian, CentOS, Windows, OSX, other OS’s)

Get a Vagrant box


What is a Vagrant Box?

Is a previously builted Vagrant virtual machine image, ready-to-run

Available in a lot of platforms (Linux, Windows, BSD)

You can create one! :)


How I add a box?

Great box repository: www.vagrantbox.es

Run this command:

$ vagrant box add <name> <url> <provider> # virtualbox


http://www.vagrantbox.es

http://www.vagrantbox.es

How I create a environment?

Inside your project, create a Vagrantfile:

$ vagrant init <your box name>


How I create a environment?

# -*- mode: ruby -*-# vi: set ft=ruby :

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config| # All Vagrant configuration is done here. The most common configuration # options are documented and commented below. For a complete reference, # please see the online documentation at vagrantup.com.

# Every Vagrant virtual environment requires a box to build off of. config.vm.box = "my_precious_box"

# ... # A list of options here # ...end


How I start to use it?

Simply run this command:

$ vagrant up


How I connect to it?

Easy:

$ vagrant ssh


How I stop it?

Easy:

$ vagrant halt


How I restart it?

Easy:

$ vagrant reload


How I access it?You need to set forwarding ports between guest and host to work (bind on 0.0.0.0!)

Just add the following code in your Vagrantfile, restart server and access in browser:


Vagrant.configure("2") do |config| # ...

config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 3000, host: 3000

# ...end


How I customize it?You can change memory, CPU cores and other things in Vagrantfile

Just see VBoxManage options

Example:



config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb| vb.customize [ 'modifyvm', :id, '--memory', '1024' ] vb.customize [ 'modifyvm', :id, '--cpus', '4' ] end

# ...end


That’s it?Of course, no! :)

It’s time to configure environment using available provisioners to install required software:

Chef Solo

Chef Server

Puppet Apply

Puppet Server

Shell

CFEngine (experimental)


Using Chef Solo

First, run chef-solo installation based on Opscode website in your guest:

$ sudo true && curl -L https://www.opscode.com/chef/install.sh | sudo bash


https://www.opscode.com/chef/install.sh

https://www.opscode.com/chef/install.sh

Using Chef SoloGet all necessary recipes from Opscode site

Great repo with a lot of recipes

Manual recipe dependency resolution sometimes



config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef| chef.add_recipe 'apt' chef.add_recipe 'build-essential' chef.add_recipe 'ruby1.9' chef.add_recipe 'mondodb' chef.add_recipe 'redis' end

# ...end


Using Chef SoloOr Install berkshelf

Vagrant plugin very similar to Bundler

generate a Berksfile in app root and run:

$ berks install --path vendor/cookbooks

source :opscode

cookbook 'mysql'cookbook 'nginx', '~> 0.101.5'


Using Chef ServerConfigure Vagrantfile to use a Chef Server as a repository

Requires a URL and a PEM key to connect



config.vm.provision :chef_client do |chef| chef.chef_server_url = 'https://your-chef-server.devops.com' chef.validation_key_path = 'your-private-key.pem' end

# ...end


https://your-chef-server-at:4000


Using Puppet Apply

Install Puppet from official repository in your guest VM:

# wget http://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-squeeze.deb# dpkg -i puppetlabs-release-squeeze.deb


http://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-squeeze.deb

http://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-squeeze.deb

Using Puppet Apply

Change Vagrantfile to use Puppet manifest files:



config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet| puppet.manifests_path = 'manifests' puppet.manifest_file = 'my-devops-puppet-manifest.pp' end

# ...end




Using Puppet Apply

Write Puppet manifest with all software that your app needs

Depending of what you need, some additional configuration is required


Using Puppet ServerChange Vagrantfile to connect on a Puppet Server

Set node hostname if you need

Add some options too



config.vm.provision :puppet_server do |puppet| puppet.puppet_server = 'http://your-master-of-puppets.devops.com' puppet.puppet_node = 'my-precious-puppet.devops.com' puppet.options = '--verbose --debug' end

# ...end




Using ShellCreate a single bash script that installs all you need:

#!/bin/bash

apt-get update

# baseapt-get install --yes python nginx mongodb-server redis-server

# othersapt-get install --yes curl tmux htop

(...)

# some additional configuration here

(...)


Installing software

Easy:

$ vagrant provision


Creating a custom boxYou can create custom boxes to distribute between development teams

Requires a fresh installation of a virtual machine based on Vagrant conventions and some manual configuration

Awesome advantage: you can repackage a existent Vagrant package after updating a existent VM

Next steps are based on Debian distro as VM with VirtualBox as provider


Creating a custom box

Installation steps:

set root password: vagrant

create a user with login vagrant and pwd vagrant

machine name: vagrant-debian-squeeze

machine host: vagrantup.com


Creating a custom boxPost-installation steps:

Install sudo on virtual machine

Add a group permission with visudo:

%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

Download SSH insecure pair files:

https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/tree/master/keys/

Save public key on GUEST in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and all keys in HOST

Or generate a custom pair of SSH keys and distribute it





Post-installation steps:

Install VirtualBox Guest Additions with /Cmd|Ctrl/-D

Remove pre-installed packages:

# apt-get remove --purge virtualbox-ose-*




VirtualBox needs xorg drivers, kernel headers and gcc to correctly build Guest Additions kernel module. Run:

# apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential xorg



# mount /media/cdrom# sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run


Run VirtualBox Guest Additions installer:



After all steps, shutdown your VM

Execute in host:

$ vagrant package <vm-name> --base <package-name> --output <box-file>

$ vagrant box add <package-name> <box-file> virtualbox



If you don’t want to build step-by-step, try veewee

https://github.com/jedi4ever/veewee

Supports VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox and KVM

Enable boxing based on a ISO file

Run as a Vagrant Plugin




Performance TipsSlow I/O on Guest

Enable Host I/O cache on SATA Controller

Slow with CPU-bound tasks

Set Motherboard Chipset to ICH9

Still searching for a solution to slow webserver bootstrap (Ruby / Python)

Anomalous kernel CPU execution time while loading


FAQ Time

It’s time to make a question! :)


Thank you! :)


Introduction to Vagrant

Technology

puppet puppet

chef chef

puppet applyinstall

chef solo chef server

manifests puppet

vagrant configuration

vagrant boxfriday

vagrant upfriday