Vagrant at LA Ruby

VagrantVirtualize your development environment.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Mitchell Hashimotogithub.com/mitchellhtwitter.com/mitchellh


$ git clone git://.../website.git...$ ???WTF!#A@#)!???...$ script/server...


$ git clone git://.../website.git...$ ???WTF!#A@#)!???...$ script/server...


Operating System

User space

WebServer

DBServer

AppServer

QueueServer

Other Server

Browser

IRC IM

EditorMusic


BIG PROBLEMS


BIG PROBLEMS1. No isolation (Oh sorry, is that Tweetie Server Edition™?)



2. Not repeatable (That README ain’t gonna run itself)



2. Not repeatable (That README ain’t gonna run itself)

3. No guarantees (But it works on my computer!!)


EC2, Slicehost, Linode, Xen, KVM, ...

VIRTUALIZATION!


EC2, Slicehost, Linode, Xen, KVM, ...

VIRTUALIZATION!


Operating System

User space

WebServer

DBServer

AppServer

QueueServer

Other Server

Browser

IRC IM

EditorMusic


Operating System

User space

Browser

IRC IM

Editor

Virtualized OS

Web Server

DB Server

App Server


PROBLEMS SOLVED


PROBLEMS SOLVED1. Isolation



2. Repeatable



2. Repeatable

3. Guarantees


BUSINESS BENEFITS


BUSINESS BENEFITS• Lower resource on-boarding time



• Version controlled server infrastructure



• Version controlled server infrastructure

• Designers get up and running in minutes


WHY NOW?(Why haven’t we been doing this all along?)


WHY NOW?

• Big companies have been!

(Why haven’t we been doing this all along?)


WHY NOW?


• Only recently possible on local machines



WHY NOW?



๏ Low RAM cost (4 GB standard, 8 GB quickly coming)



WHY NOW?



๏ Low RAM cost (4 GB standard, 8 GB quickly coming)

๏ Desktop virtualization API





HIGH LEVEL OVERVIEW‣ Describe environment via versionable Vagrantfile

‣ Manage virtual machine lifecycle

‣ Share folder from host to guest via NFS

‣ Provide SSH access to instance

‣ Provision instance using Chef, Puppet, etc.

‣ Manage host/guest networking


Vagrantfile

• Describes the virtual machine environment in code

๏ One per project

๏ Commit to version control

๏ Pure Ruby - Limitless configuration.


Vagrant::Config.run do |config| config.vm.box = "lucid32"end

Vagrantfile


Virtual Machine Lifecycle

$ vagrant up$ vagrant halt$ vagrant suspend$ vagrant destroy$ vagrant reload$ vagrant ssh$ vagrant --help

‣ vagrant binary

‣ Completely managed from creation to destruction

๏ (and creation... and destruction... and creation... and so on!)


Shared Folders via NFS

‣ File changes on host are immediately mirrored in the VM

‣ Continue using your favorite editor on your machine!

‣ By default mounted to /vagrant in VM


DEMO


Onto the good stuff...(let’s make it useful)


Provisioning

• Use Chef, Puppet, Bash, etc. to provision your VM

๏ Repeatable! (BIG Problem #2, remember?)

๏ Use the same tools as production


Vagrant::Config.run do |config| config.vm.box = "lucid32" config.vm.provisioner = :chef_soloend

Provisioning


Networking

• Assign an IP to your VM

๏ Access VM using your own browser


Vagrant::Config.run do |config| config.vm.box = "lucid32" config.vm.provisioner = :chef_solo config.vm.network("33.33.33.10")end

Networking


DEMO


Other stuff...(no demos here, you can experiment)


Packaging

• Package built development environments

๏ vagrant package

๏ Distributable

๏ Minimize setup time


Multi-VM• Represent multi-server environments

๏ e.g. web + db + utility


Vagrant::Config.run do |config| config.vm.define :web do |web| # ... end

config.vm.define :db do |db| # ... endend

Multi-VM


Rake Integration

• Use vagrant as a library

๏ Invoke command line actions

๏ Custom SSH commands


require 'vagrant'

desc "Restart the web application"task :restart do env = Vagrant::Environment.load! env.ssh.execute do |ssh| ssh.exec!("touch /vagrant/tmp/restart.txt") endend

Rake Integration


Plugins (0.6)

• Extend Vagrant using a supported API

• Add new commands to vagrant binary

• Add new configuration options

• Modify existing commands

• e.g. vagrant rake - Just pass through arguments to rake on the VM.


Review

• Continue using your existing development tools

• Run your web app in a VM

• VM setup file (Vagrantfile) in version control


LOSE NOTHING. GAIN EVERYTHING.



IN ACTION


• Vagrant for all projects since March

• Around 15 to 20 developers using it all day every day

• Unexpected: Unique testing not possible before


• All Rails projects since July on Vagrant

• Massive reduction in on-boarding difficulty for new hires

• Looking into using it for Java-based projects in the near future


• Multi-VM setup (web + db + flash media server)

• Solved: No easy way to emulate FMS on Mac.

• Forced devops good practices

• Example of successful distribution of boxes


About the Project• Current release: 0.5.4

• Started development in January. First release in March.

• 0.6 development well under way:

๏ 179 commits, 226 files changed, 4081 lines added, 5730 lines deleted.

๏ Aiming for release in about 4 weeks.

๏ Biggest release yet


Getting Started + More Info

• Website: vagrantup.com

• IRC: #vagrant on Freenode

• Github: http://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant


http://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant

http://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant

Technology

Vagrant at LA Ruby