Vagrant is a tool to emulate a cluster of machines. Version 2.0.1 is recommended.
The user needs to have VirtualBox installed. Version 5.2.4 is recommended.
For Linux systems a simple package installation is enough.
#Ubuntu
wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/2.0.1/vagrant_2.0.1_x86_64.deb
sudo dpkg -i vagrant_2.0.1_x86_64.deb
For Windows, despite the Ubuntu environment was set to run Ansible, vagrant needs to be installed as if it was to be executed using the CMD console. To install it download msi file from: https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html. Sometimes there are directories ownership issues with vagrant installation. To solve it is required to click in properties and claim ownership of the directory so the installation can proceed. Despite it is installed to be used on the CMD console vagrant.exe can be called from using Ubuntu environment. Before doing that some environment variables need to be set. Create env_linux.sh and run env_windows.sh on Ubuntu environment before using vagrant.exe. It is important to make sure home directory for vagrant has write permissions for Windows users, not only for Windows root/administrator.
#create and edit env_linux.sh.template
cp env_linux.sh.template env_linux.cmd
#edit it
vim env_linux.cmd
#On Ubuntu bash for Windows run, it is required to restart all consoles to have the environment variables set.
./env_windows.sh
NOTE: despite the Ubuntu environment is used to run Vagrant the user should call the vagrant's command as this:
vagrant.exe
Vagrant needs two plugins and they will be installed in VAGRANT_HOME.
#Plugin for persistent storage
vagrant(.exe) plugin install vagrant-persistent-storage
#Plugin to manage hosts
vagrant(.exe) plugin install vagrant-hostmanager
#It is recommended to install vbguest plugin
vagrant(.exe) plugin install vagrant-vbguest
On Windows to run Vagrant's commands simply use Ubuntu bash console. To create the virtual machines or start them use:
vagrant(.exe) up
To update guest machines /etc/hosts the user after a vagrant up should always run:
vagrant(.exe) hostmanager
On Linux the host machine /etc/hosts will automatically be updated. On Windows because the Ubuntu environment has its own /etc/hosts the guest nodes IPs need to be retrieved by hand. After vagrant hostmanager run:
sh getHosts.sh
To halt all VMs
vagrant(.exe) halt
To destroy all VMs
vagrant(.exe) destroy
In case vagrant needs to be set using a private network due to issues in getting IPs in the public network the option --network-type=private_network should be used.
vagrant(.exe) --network-type=private_network up
If not used, vagrant will set a public network by default. To switch between a public and private network and vice versa it is required a vagrant(.exe) halt and then vagrant(.exe) up, it is not recommended to use vagrant(.exe) reload.
Verify login for N hosts.
ssh -i ${CLUSTER_NAME}.key root@${CLUSTER_NAME}0.$HOST_DOMAIN uptime
...
ssh -i ${CLUSTER_NAME}.key root@${CLUSTER_NAME}N.$HOST_DOMAIN uptime