----

-date: 2010-11-22T00:00:00Z

-summary: In which I share my enthusiasm for Vagrant

-title: Vagrant rocks

----

-

-## tl;dr

-

-I've been toying with [vagrant](http://vagrantup.com/) lately, and it **really rocks**. You should definitly give it a try. If you're only looking for some resources to get started with it, go there:

-

- * [introduction](http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/why-vagrant/)

- * [google group](http://groups.google.com/group/vagrant-up)

-

-## What is Vagrant

-

-"Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing virtualized development environments." This sentence summarizes perfectly the project.

-

-The idea is to use [Chef](http://www.opscode.com/chef) on top of [VirtualBox](http://www.virtualbox.org/) to deploy a VM like you would deploy a server in your production environment.

-

-I won't go into the details to describe Chef and VirtualBox, but here is a quick reminder. Chef is a framework to deploy infrastructures. It's written in ruby, it uses **cookbooks** to describe how to deploy stuff, and VirtualBox is a virtualization software from Oracle.

-

-> A little disclaimer. I don't use Chef outside from vagrant, so I may say/do some stupid things. The aim of this tutorial is not about writing a recipe for Chef, but to show what you can do thanks to Chef. So don't hesitate to correct me in the comments if I'm doing some utterly stupid things.

-

-## The basic

-

-To install vagrant, you'll need ruby and virtualbox. You have the basic instructions detailed [here](http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/getting-started/). This will explain how to install vagrant and how to fetch a **base** image.

-

-### Creating a first project

-

-You'll probably want to start creating a new project now. For this tutorial, I'll create an image for [presque](https://github.com/franckcuny/presque).

-

-```sh

-% mkdir presque

-% vagrant init

-```

-

-This will create a new image for your project, and create a new file in your directory: **Vagrantfile**. Modify this file to make it look like this:

-

-```ruby

-Vagrant::Config.run do |config|

- config.vm.box = "base"

- config.vm.provisioner = :chef_solo

- config.chef.cookbooks_path = "cookbooks"

- config.chef.add_recipe("vagrant_main")

- config.vm.forward_port("web", 5000, 8080)

-end

-```

-

-These instructions will:

-

- * tell vagrant to use the image named **base** (a lucid32 image by default)

- * use chef in **solo** mode

- * the recipes will be in a directory named **cookbooks**

- * the main recipe will be named **vagrant_main**

- * forward local HTTP port 4000 to 5000 on the VM

-

-### My recipes

-

-Now we need to create or use some recipes. First we create our **cookbooks** directory:

-

-```sh

-% mkdir cookbooks

-% mkdir -p cookbooks/vagrant_main/recipes

-```

-

-We need to add some cookbooks. You will find them on [GitHub](https://github.com/opscode/cookbooks). Copy the following cookbooks inside the **cookbooks** repository:

-

- * apt: instructions on how to use apt

- * ubuntu: this one manages the sources and executes **apt-get update**

- * build-essential: installs the build-essential package

- * git: installs git

- * perl: configures CPAN

- * runit: will be used to monitor redis and our web application

-

-Edit **vagrant_main/recipes/default.rb** to add them:

-

-```ruby

-require_recipe "ubuntu"

-require_recipe "git"

-require_recipe "perl"

-require_recipe "redis"

-require_recipe "runit"

-```

-

-If the VM is already started, you can run `vagrant provision` or `vagrant up`. This will deploy the previous cookbooks on the VM. When it's done, you can log on the VM with `vagrant ssh`.

-

-You'll need to additional recipes: one for redis; one for presque. You'll find them on my [GitHub account](http://git.lumberjaph.net/chef-cookbooks.git/). Copy the two recipes inside your cookbook directory, and execute `vagrant provision` to install them.

-

-If everything works fine, you should be able to start using presque. Test this:

-

-```sh

-% curl http://localhost:8080/q/foo/

-{"error":"no job"}

-

-% curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"foo":"bar"}' http://localhost:8080/q/foo/

-

-% curl http://localhost:8080/q/foo/

-{"foo":"bar"}

-```

-

-If everything is fine, you can shut down the VM with `vagrant halt`.

-

-### Mounting directories

-

-Instead of pulling from github, you may prefer to mount a local directory on the VM. For this, you'll need to modifiy the **Vagrantfile** to add this:

-

-```sh

-config.vm.share_folder "v-code", "/deployment/code", "~/code/perl5"

-config.vm.share_folder "v-data", "/deployment/data", "~/code/data"

-```

-

-This will mount your local directories **perl5** and **data** under **/deployment/{code,data}** on the VM. So now you can edit your files locally and they will be automagically updated on the VM at once.

-

-## and now the awesome part

-

-If you're like me, you may end up with the need to have multiple VMs which will talk to each other. Common scenarios are a VM with the website, and another one with the DB, or one VM with a bunch of API webservices and another with Workers who need to interact with the VM. Rejoice, this kind of stuff is also handled by vagrant!

-

-Replace the content of the previous **Vagrantfile** with this:

-

-```ruby

-Vagrant::Config.run do |config|

- config.vm.box = "base"

- config.vm.provisioner = :chef_solo

-

- config.chef.cookbooks_path = "cookbooks"

-

- config.vm.define :presque do |presque_config|

- presque_config.chef.add_recipe("vagrant_presque")

- presque_config.vm.network("192.168.1.10")

- presque_config.vm.forward_port("presque", 80, 8080)

- presque_config.vm.customize do |vm|

- vm.name = "vm_presque"

- end

- end

-

- config.vm.define :workers do |workers_config|

- workers_config.chef.add_recipe("vagrant_workers")

- workers_config.vm.network("192.168.1.11")

- workers_config.vm.customize do |vm|

- vm.name = "vm_workers"

- end

- end

-end

-```

-

-In this configuration, we're creating two VMs, **presque** and **workers**. You'll need to create two new cookbooks, one for each new VM (vagrant_presque, with the same content as vagrant_main, and vagrant_workers, with only the recipe for ubuntu and the instructions to install curl). Once it's done, boot the two VMs:

-

-```sh

-% vagrant up presque

-% vagrant up workers

-```

-

-Now let's log on the worker VM

-

-```sh

-% vagrant ssh workers

-vagrant@vagrantup:~$ curl http://192.168.1.10:5000/q/foo

-{"error":"no job"}

-```

-

-and voilà.

-

-## Conclusion

-

-I've started to use vagrant for all my new personal projects and for most of my stuff at work. I really enjoy using this, as it's easy to create a cookbook or add one, it's easy to setup a multi VM environment, you can share a configuration amongst your coworkers, etc.

-

-If you haven't started yet using a VM for your own projects, you really should give it a try, or use a simple VirtualBox setup. If you want to read more on the subject, these two blog posts may be relevant:

-

- * [Why you should be using virtualisation](http://morethanseven.net/2010/11/04/Why-you-should-be-using-virtualisation.html)

- * [nothingmuch setup](http://blog.woobling.org/2010/10/headless-virtualbox.html)

-

-(oh, and BTW, did you notice that [Dancer 1.2](http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Dancer) is out ?)