Introduction

Starting a basic operating system environment from a Vagrantfile can be useful, but the real power of Vagrant is the ability to not only define operating parameters, but also to provision environments in a repeatable way. Vagrant implements a number of methods to install and configure software wherein each different method is referred to as a provisioner.

This chapter introduces and expands on the basic concept of provisioning a Vagrant environment. In the previous chapters, we have seen how to launch and configure basic environments, some of which included basic provisioning such as installing a web server. In reality, simply installing software is only the beginning (the process of configuring software for use is where the real work begins). Automating this process through scripts and configuration management will give you the dual advantage of saving time and environment stability. Vagrant is an ideal tool to test configuration management—creating, provisioning, testing...