Installing Vagrant came with a decision for me: use the free VirtualBox integration (which is probably sufficient, but feels a bit disloyal to me!) or pay $80 for the VMware plugin that would allow Vagrant to build machines in Fusion (or Workstation, if that’s your thing). If this were something I planned to use every day, I would definitely pony up for the Fusion plugin, but since I’m only learning, I went the free route.

Vagrant Installation

This installation process couldn’t be simpler. Simply download VirtualBox beforehand, and then download the latest version of Vagrant.

Download VirtualBox – https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
Download Vagrant – https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html

Both applications are a Next > Next > Finish sort of installation. Just download the installer and run it.

To test initial functionality after the install, we’ll run vagrant init hashicorp/precise32 and then vagrant up. That’s literally all it takes to get a fully functional Ubuntu machine running on Vagrant! I can’t get a decent Internet connection where I live, but even with my itty-bitty bandwidth, this process was fast. The time from when I decided I wanted to play with Vagrant to the time I was running an Ubuntu VM (which included downloading VirtualBox, Vagrant, and the Ubuntu box) was about 15 minutes! Also, provisioning this box from scratch if everything was previously downloaded takes about 60 seconds on my machine. And if it was already provisioned and just halted, starting it again takes <10 seconds. Imagine how useful this is for quick testing!