Vagrant: Up and Running: Create and Manage Virtualized Development Environments

by Mitchell Hashimoto

Discover why Vagrant is a must-have tool for thousands of developers and ops engineers. This hands-on guide shows you how to use this open source software to build a virtual machine for any purpose―including a completely sandboxed, fully provisioned development environment right on your desktop. Vagrant creator Mitchell Hashimoto shows you how to share a virtual machine image with members of your team, set up a separate virtualization for each project, and package virtual machines for use by others. This book covers the V1 (1.0.x) configuration syntax running on top of a V2 (1.1+) core, the most stable configuration format running on the latest core.

Genres: Programming, Technology, Technical, Computer Science, Nonfiction, Reference, Software

155 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn hard to rate - it's a straightforward and unimaginative tutorial - more like a bit of documentation than a book that requires some invention. It introduces Vagrant quite well, but unfortunately it strongly avoids diving below the easiest examples. There are barely any real life cases, just the most simple (tutorial style) excercises. One one hand - it's good enough for an introduction (noone says that this is a recipes book), but a good example is usually a much better illustration than basic usage examples.

Vagrant as a solution is a completely different story and I'm not going to rate it in this review - as it's not the point here.

[Yuri Karabatov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like documentation, but a bit more wordy and accessible. Also, published in 2013, it's now quite outdated with v2 released. But I got it for free, so not a bad read.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in consistent development practices and the application of 'vagrant' to create and manage virtual machine environments then the book is worth reading. The examples are dated, in the writers defense the intent and application of the technology is very well explained.

A great supplement to the vagrant documentation:
https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/

Ultimately, the best resource is the vagrant code itself, the book is a map to the intent of the tool by the author of both the book and tool.

[Tej · Rating 2 out of 5]

An Outdated Vagrant tech and book, but even if it is read in 2013 as it was written I think reading the official documentation is still better.

as there are no extra examples or practical demos or stories or stuff that a non tech or new to this tech would appreciate in this book.

Still a quick read through to understand basic components of vagrant even in 2025 that is why giving 2 stars.

don't waste time on buying this book, rather just read the official documentation if interested in this tool

[Angel Garbarino · Rating 4 out of 5]

First part of the book was most relevant to me (beginner). Skimmed later chapters for concepts and general understanding of features. Well written, short and sweet. Good examples and walk throughs.

[Tarun Sachdeva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Straight forward and easy to read. Though the book is old and needs to be edited for the newer releases of vagrant.

[John Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does exactly what it says on the cover - and a chunk more.

The first 85 pages provide a concise and yet comprehensive introduction to the core areas of vagrant. The remained of the book is dedicated to explaining how you can extend vagrant.

Although 85 pages may seem a little slim, a lot of material is covered and I wasn’t left with the feeling that I was missing much.

Covers the core components of vagrant:

Deploying environments (virtual machines)
Networking
Provisioning using shell,chef,puppet
Managing multi-node environments (good for exploring how services work together)
Managing Boxes - including building your own

and then rounds off with an extensive section on:

Extending vagrant

The section on extending vagrant really makes you see that it’s possible even for mere mortals. You may never need this knowledge but it’s very nice to see - and it gives you a deeper and more rounded understanding of Vagrant.

The book gives you easily enough to get up and running with Vagrant and gives you a better understanding of what’s happening and why you’re doing this. I’m now using Vagrant to help me test services and their deployment - so the book did indeed get me up and running.

Pros: Very interesting and readable introduction to a fun and powerful tool.

Cons: The book is a little bit dated, vagrant has moved on. However the core concepts are the same and reading through the book will put you in an ideal place to move on with vagrant.

Would I recommend it:

If you’re just starting with Vagrant then without question - I really gained a lot from this book and am glad I own it.

[John Constable · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this when O'Reilly had a sale on, and were also promoting it by putting it up for full access on SafariOnline. I'd been introduced to it by Diego Zamboni on his one day CFEngine 3 course, and have since used it to manage my CFEngine testing environment, and, spurred on by this book, a VM for some Java testing.

As it also explained some areas of VirtualBox I wasn't clear on, reading this has set me up for using it for some software simulators, such as the useful but fiddly to setup NetApp ones..

Its all the information you need to get started and even develop your own extensions and plugins, and although you can get most of the info from the website, its much better laid out here and a lot clearer - worth the money, especially as its written by the developer.

[Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned from this book that vagrant really is quite simple! This was a quick book to read through, and it seems to be a complete survey of the features available.

Some of the book was a bit repetitive, and if you already know how to work with linux, you won't need to pay great attention to a fair bit of it, but I think it is aimed at the entire user base of vagrant, and should work for just about anyone.

I think my next trick will be to read through a book on chef, since that is the next part of the stack that has complexity I don't yet understand how to use to its fullest.

[Ha Truong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here comes a new term Automation Configuration along with Automation Testing to ease the life of agile practitioner. Just with a single command, then you can have a production-like environment to develop.

The main part of the book is "The Tao of Vagrant", you should read it first to get to the key principles why people need such a tool like Vagrant.

The last chapter is only helpful if you want to build your own plugin or do some tweaks with Vagrant.

Apart from this book, the document on the website is also useful for reference because it keeps changing as Vagrant is moving forward.

[Tsvetomir · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is basically a more verbose version of vagrantup.com. If you want to use vagrant as regular user - don't waste time and money with it, just stick with the official doc.
However the last chapter of the book is dedicated to plugins and plugin development. It has a lot of examples and advises. If you are about to develop your own plugins for vagrant you might find this information useful.

[János Fehér · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction for Vagrant. Luckily the author explain Puppet, Ruby and Chef just as much as you need to understand the examples. Because of this you need to be experienced developer to understand the full potential of Vagrant and get books on Puppet and Ruby.

Why I give 4 stars is because it doesn't get into the details of providers other than VirtualBox.

[Andreas Manessinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is from 2013 and therefore pretty outdated. As an introduction it is still good though, especially when you - like me - just want to use Vagrant (as opposed to extending it). Most likely this is true for the vast majority of users.

As a book it is straightforward and easily readable. Recommended!

[finisherr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vagrant: Up and Running provides a brief overview of the virtual-machine manager technology. My only complaint is that it does not extend very far beyond the scope of the documentation found on the web site. However, those who wish to build base boxes from scratch will find some value in this one.

[Manuel Pöter · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a little outdated in some parts, but it's still a great introduction into vagrant. I especially liked the chapter about plugin development because it contains a lot of information that is not available in the online documentation.

[Timo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good albeit brief introduction to Vagrant. There were good examples on how Vagrant works and can be utilized. My only grief was that the examples were pretty basic and seemed to only scratch the surface.

[Piotr Stapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

It really go through all aspects of how to work with Vagrant. I read this book twice, first time as a really vagrant beginner and second time to order my knowledge.

It is nice, easy to read and show everything you need to know.

[Ajitabh Pandey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to the world of Vagrant. It covers all the aspects of vagrant and how it can be used to provision multiple machines for a development environment which simulates the production environment.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good guide to get started with Vagrant. Also provides good info on extended Vagrant by writing your own plug in. Knowing Ruby is definitely helpful, but not required.

[Horacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy rápido de leer y clarísimo en explicar los aspectos técnicos y filosóficos detrás de la herramienta. Además sirve como conciso tutorial. Recomendado para cualquier desarrollador o DevOps!

[Frank Mcgeough · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK. But probably just as good is the online documentation. Some people just prefer having a book in their hand and for those folks its worthwhile getting for an intro to Vagrant.

[Steve Krzysiak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing you can't get online, but I wanted to familiarize myself quicker and reading this on the train did the trick.

[Suresh Prajapati · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the configuration examples are old. Only the plug-in development section was good.
Vagrant official documentation is much better :)

[Alvaro Melendez Jimenez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quite serviceable introduction to Vagrant.

[Soham Chakraborty · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only issue was that my edition was vagrant 1 instead of vagrant 2. Other than that, this is a good book. I was however expecting some more coverage than the online documentation.

[Yiorgos Adamopoulos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book to get you up to speed.

[Dmitry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good guide to delve into vagrant

[Madhur Ahuja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beginner's introduction to Vagrant

[Slade Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good guide if you know nothing about Vagrant,
if you're allready familiar with the basics of Vagrant, skip this book