Vagrant

Portable Development Environments

Deploy Vagrant on your RamNode VPS to create reproducible, isolated virtual machine environments. Perfect for team collaboration, CI/CD pipelines, and standardized development workflows.

What is Vagrant?

Vagrant is an open-source tool developed by HashiCorp that provides a consistent workflow for building and managing virtual machine environments. It acts as a wrapper around virtualization platforms like VirtualBox, VMware, and KVM, allowing you to define your entire development environment as code through a simple configuration file called a Vagrantfile.

While traditionally used on local machines, running Vagrant on a VPS opens up new possibilities for team collaboration, CI/CD pipelines, and centralized development environments.

Key Use Cases

Development Standardization

Ensure all team members work with identical configurations, eliminating "works on my machine" problems.

Testing and QA

Create isolated environments for testing different software versions or configurations.

Multi-tenant Development

Run multiple isolated development environments on a single VPS for different projects.

CI/CD Integration

Automate testing pipelines with reproducible build environments.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the installation, ensure your RamNode VPS meets the following requirements:

A RamNode KVM VPS with at least 4GB RAM (8GB recommended for running multiple VMs)
Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 LTS, Debian 11/12, or Rocky Linux 8/9
Root or sudo access to the server
At least 20GB of available disk space (50GB+ recommended)
Nested virtualization enabled

Verify Nested Virtualization

Nested virtualization allows you to run a virtual machine inside another virtual machine. Since your RamNode VPS is already a VM, you need nested virtualization support. RamNode KVM VPS instances support nested virtualization.

Check CPU virtualization support:

Check virtualization extensions

egrep -c '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo

If the output is greater than 0, your CPU supports virtualization. For Intel CPUs, look for vmx; for AMD, look for svm.

Verify KVM modules are loaded:

Check KVM modules

lsmod | grep kvm

You should see kvm_intel or kvm_amd listed, along with the base kvm module.

Method 1: Vagrant with KVM/Libvirt (Recommended)

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a native Linux virtualization solution that offers excellent performance on VPS environments. This is the recommended approach for production use.

Install KVM and Dependencies

Install KVM on Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon-system libvirt-clients bridge-utils virt-manager

Add your user to the libvirt group:

Add user to groups

sudo usermod -aG libvirt $USER
sudo usermod -aG kvm $USER

Enable and start libvirtd:

Start libvirt service

sudo systemctl enable libvirtd
sudo systemctl start libvirtd

Log out and back in for group membership changes to take effect.

Install Vagrant

Install Vagrant on Ubuntu/Debian

wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y vagrant

Verify the installation:

Verify Vagrant version

vagrant --version

Install Vagrant Libvirt Plugin

Install libvirt plugin

vagrant plugin install vagrant-libvirt

If you encounter dependency issues, install the development packages:

Install development dependencies

sudo apt install -y libvirt-dev ruby-dev gcc make

Method 2: Vagrant with VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a more traditional option and may be familiar to developers who use Vagrant locally. However, it typically has higher overhead than KVM on server environments.

Install VirtualBox (Alternative)

Install VirtualBox on Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y virtualbox virtualbox-ext-pack

Add your user to the vboxusers group:

Add user to vboxusers group

sudo usermod -aG vboxusers $USER

Log out and back in for the changes to take effect. Then follow the same Vagrant installation steps as in Method 1.

Creating Your First Virtual Machine

Initialize a Vagrant Project

Create project directory

mkdir ~/vagrant-test
cd ~/vagrant-test
vagrant init generic/ubuntu2204

This creates a Vagrantfile in the current directory with default settings.

Configure the Provider

Edit the Vagrantfile to configure the libvirt provider:

Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "generic/ubuntu2204"

  config.vm.provider :libvirt do |libvirt|
    libvirt.memory = 2048
    libvirt.cpus = 2
  end
end

For VirtualBox, use config.vm.provider :virtualbox instead.

Launch the Virtual Machine

Start the VM

vagrant up --provider=libvirt

The first time you run this command, Vagrant will download the box image, which may take several minutes.

Connect to the VM:

SSH into the VM

vagrant ssh

Advanced Vagrantfile Configuration

Multi-Machine Environment

Create multiple VMs in a single Vagrantfile for testing distributed systems

Multi-machine Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "generic/ubuntu2204"

  config.vm.define "web" do |web|
    web.vm.hostname = "web-server"
    web.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.10"
  end

  config.vm.define "db" do |db|
    db.vm.hostname = "database"
    db.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.11"
  end
end

Provisioning with Shell Scripts

Automatically configure VMs during creation

Provisioned Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "generic/ubuntu2204"

  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
    apt-get update
    apt-get install -y nginx
    systemctl enable nginx
    systemctl start nginx
  SHELL
end

Synced Folders

Share directories between your VPS and the Vagrant VM

Synced folder configuration

config.vm.synced_folder "./data", "/vagrant_data"

Essential Vagrant Commands

Command	Description
vagrant up	Start and provision the VM
vagrant halt	Gracefully shut down the VM
vagrant destroy	Delete the VM and all its resources
vagrant reload	Restart the VM and reload Vagrantfile configuration
vagrant status	Check the current state of VMs
vagrant ssh	Connect to the VM via SSH
vagrant suspend	Save VM state and stop (faster than halt)
vagrant resume	Resume a suspended VM
vagrant snapshot push	Create a snapshot of the current state

Performance Optimization

Resource Allocation

Be conservative with memory and CPU allocation (60-70% of VPS resources max)

Optimized resource configuration

config.vm.provider :libvirt do |libvirt|
  libvirt.memory = 2048           # 2GB for the VM
  libvirt.cpus = 2                # 2 CPU cores
  libvirt.cpu_mode = 'host-passthrough'  # Better performance
end

Disk I/O Optimization

Use virtio drivers for better disk performance

Virtio disk configuration

config.vm.provider :libvirt do |libvirt|
  libvirt.disk_bus = 'virtio'
end

Box Management

Regularly clean up unused boxes to free disk space

Clean up boxes

vagrant box list
vagrant box remove <box-name>
vagrant box prune

Troubleshooting

Nested Virtualization Not Available

Verify that your RamNode VPS is a KVM instance (not OpenVZ)
Check if KVM modules are loaded: lsmod | grep kvm
Contact RamNode support to ensure nested virtualization is enabled for your VPS

Libvirt Connection Issues

Restart libvirtd

sudo systemctl status libvirtd
sudo systemctl restart libvirtd

Ensure you're in the libvirt and kvm groups and have logged out and back in.

Network Connectivity Problems

Check libvirt network

sudo virsh net-list --all
sudo virsh net-start default
sudo virsh net-autostart default

Out of Memory Errors

If the VPS runs out of memory, reduce VM allocations or upgrade your RamNode plan.

Monitor memory usage

free -h
htop

Security Considerations

Firewall Configuration: Ensure your VPS firewall blocks access to Vagrant VM ports from the internet unless explicitly needed
Default Credentials: Always change default Vagrant credentials (username: vagrant, password: vagrant) in production environments
SSH Keys: Use SSH keys for authentication instead of passwords
Updates: Keep Vagrant, the hypervisor, and box images updated regularly
Network Isolation: Use private networks for VM-to-VM communication

Best Practices for Production Use

Version Control

Store Vagrantfiles in Git to track environment changes

Backup Strategy

Regularly snapshot VMs using vagrant snapshot push

Clean Up

Destroy unused VMs to free resources with vagrant destroy

Automation

Use provisioning scripts to automate VM setup

Real-World Use Case: LAMP Stack

Development Team Environment

Create a standardized LAMP stack for your team

LAMP Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "generic/ubuntu2204"
  config.vm.hostname = "dev-lamp"
  config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.10"

  config.vm.provider :libvirt do |libvirt|
    libvirt.memory = 4096
    libvirt.cpus = 2
  end

  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
    apt-get update
    apt-get install -y apache2 mysql-server php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql
    systemctl enable apache2
    systemctl start apache2
  SHELL

  config.vm.synced_folder "./www", "/var/www/html"
end

Additional Resources

Official Vagrant Documentation Vagrant Libvirt Provider Vagrant Cloud Box Catalog KVM Virtualization Guide