Ansible playground with Vagrant

Vagrant makes it very easy to play with Ansible locally. This article provides essential information about that process to get you started in no time.

First, install Vagrant binary. On OSX, it can be done with Homebrew Cask. For other OS, check Vagrant Downloads and download a binary that fits your case.

brew cask install vagrant

Let's start by generating Vagrantfile.

vagrant init

Since Vagrant 1.3, Ansible provisioner is built-in. Adjust Vagrantfile by specifying a playbook file to use as an entry point.

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "hashicorp/precise64"

  config.vm.provision :ansible, :playbook => "playbook.yml"
end

You can check Vagrant's Ansible Provisioner documentation for details, e.g. how to specify an inventory file or pass execution parameters.

Next, create playbook.yml in the same directory as Vagrantfile.

---
- hosts: all
  sudo: yes
  tasks:
    - name: install cURL
      apt: pkg=curl state=installed

Finally, run vagrant up to start and provision the box. Once you changed the playbook and your box is still running, you can simply vagrant provision to apply those changes.