Vagrant workflow - vagrant

Question

Hi i was trying to understand what exactly is done when running
vagrant up
my reason for that is that in my case we need to install a lot of utilities.
i.e Version control tools, build tools, ide, etc...
which takes a lot of time.
so actually i wanted a 'box' with all those tools.
After i have clean environment and got all tools, i would like to make CI for our product.
If i will reinstall all utilities it should take a lot of time. so what i am actually need is just installing and testing our product.
How should i handle that ??
create my own box? does the command reinstall all utilities when we make CI ??
what i actually need are 2 processes :
1.installing utilities for my vm. (once a month)
2.test our product (each commit\push to version control)
how can i achieve that ?

Answer 1

For the first time, vagrant up will create a new VM for you, pulling the box image if needed, and it will provision it with what you configured in the Vagrantfile. In the provision configuration, you can tell Chef or Puppet to install all the utilities and tools that you need.
When you suspend or halt the VM, the next time you do a vagrant up it will only bring that VM back up. It will not install or try to provision it again.
You can force it with vagrant up --provision or just vagrant provision.
This usually works well in a development environment.
In a CI environment, it may not be possible to have the VM already provision, forcing you to run the provisioning step every time. You can achieve what you need packaging your own box with the tools already installed, essentially creating a golden or base image.
Just be extra careful so that the CI environment don't differ for what you have in production.

Answer 2

All depend on the setting in Vagrantfile
you have modules folder to put all puppet modules, manifests folder with site.pp and Vagrantfile as below under same place.
Give you a sample of Vagrantfile I used mostly.
VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
config.vm.box = "precise64"
config.vm.box_url = "https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/vagrant/precise/current/precise-server-cloudimg-amd64-vagrant-disk1.box "
config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet|
puppet.module_path = "modules"
puppet.manifests_path = "manifests"
puppet.manifest_file = "site.pp"
end
config.vm.define :www do |config|
config.vm.host_name = "www.example.com"
config.vm.network :private_network, ip: "192.168.1.2"
end
config.vm.define :db1 do |config|
config.vm.host_name = "db1.example.com"
config.vm.network :private_network, ip: "192.168.1.4"
end
end
So after run vagrant up www or vagrant up db1 it will start the box with puppet apply directly. You can understand this way as puppet masterless
Vagrant just make the box up running from linux image defined in config.vm.box_url as a simple fresh linux box, and mount your local folder to new box's /vagrant folder, then hand over to puppet. How the server to be provisioned, will be depended on site.pp (define applications on each node) and puppet modules. The command is similar as
puppet apply --modulepath /vagrant/module /vagrant/manifests/site.pp
So if your puppet modules are fine, your new box will automatically have all utilities and products installed. Then you run vagrant ssh www or vagrant ssh db1, you can login it and start working.
You can put your local folder with moduels, manifests folders and Vagrantfile to version control (such as git). So developers can clone the git repository to their own computer easily.