Managing and provisioning VMs
Cleanup
Once you've worked with your Vagrant VMs, the last order of business is to clean up the environment. Depending on your needs, you can use Vagrant to take snapshots, suspend, halt, or destroy the VMs.
If you need to verify your VM's current state before running any commands, you can get some useful output with:
$ vagrant status
Suspending the guest machine will save the machine's current running state and stop it:
$ vagrant suspend
A suspended machine can be resumed with the vagrant up
command.
Halting the guest machine will shut it down pretty much like a physical computer. To turn off the machine, type:
$ vagrant halt
When you enter this command, Vagrant will first attempt to gracefully halt the machine by executing the proper commands to initiate a shutdown from within the guest machine. However, if it is unable to communicate with the machine and the shutdown sequence times out, Vagrant will forcefully shut it down.
It's also wise to take regular snapshots of the VMs, which you can then roll back to if you run into problems. To do this, use:
$ vagrant snapshot save <name> $ vagrant snapshot restore <name>
Here <name>
is the unique string to identify the snapshot. The first command creates the snapshot, while the second command restores from it (Figure 5).
Finally, when you are done with a VM you can zap it from your host machine and remove all traces of it by deleting hard disks, state files, and so on with:
$ vagrant destroy
Remember that destroying a VM will cause you to lose all changes, as well as any files or folders created outside of the shared filesystem. When you now issue a vagrant up
command, Vagrant will create the VM from scratch, which means it'll provision it again as well.
Conclusions
Now that you have a basic understanding of Vagrant, I hope you can see its potential. If you choose to deploy Vagrant in your production environment, you should first read Vagrant's extensive documentation section [6].
Infos
- Vagrant: http://www.vagrantup.com
- Download Vagrant: http://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
- VirtualBox Linux downloads: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads
- List of predefined boxes: https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search
- Installing desktop environments inside CentOS 7: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-install-a-gui-on-top-of-centos-7
- Vagrant documentation: http://www.vagrantup.com/docs
« Previous 1 2 3
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
![Learn More](https://www.linux-magazine.com/var/linux_magazin/storage/images/media/linux-magazine-eng-us/images/misc/learn-more/834592-1-eng-US/Learn-More_medium.png)
News
-
NVIDIA Released Driver for Upcoming NVIDIA 560 GPU for Linux
Not only has NVIDIA released the driver for its upcoming CPU series, it's the first release that defaults to using open-source GPU kernel modules.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 24.07 Released
If you’re into rolling release Linux distributions, OpenMandriva ROME has a new snapshot with a new kernel.
-
Kernel 6.10 Available for General Usage
Linus Torvalds has released the 6.10 kernel and it includes significant performance increases for Intel Core hybrid systems and more.
-
TUXEDO Computers Releases InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 Laptop
Sporting either AMD or Intel CPUs, the TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 is an extremely compact, lightweight, sturdy powerhouse.
-
Google Extends Support for Linux Kernels Used for Android
Because the LTS Linux kernel releases are so important to Android, Google has decided to extend the support period beyond that offered by the kernel development team.
-
Linux Mint 22 Stable Delayed
If you're anxious about getting your hands on the stable release of Linux Mint 22, it looks as if you're going to have to wait a bit longer.
-
Nitrux 3.5.1 Available for Install
The latest version of the immutable, systemd-free distribution includes an updated kernel and NVIDIA driver.
-
Debian 12.6 Released with Plenty of Bug Fixes and Updates
The sixth update to Debian "Bookworm" is all about security mitigations and making adjustments for some "serious problems."
-
Canonical Offers 12-Year LTS for Open Source Docker Images
Canonical is expanding its LTS offering to reach beyond the DEB packages with a new distro-less Docker image.
-
Plasma Desktop 6.1 Released with Several Enhancements
If you're a fan of Plasma Desktop, you should be excited about this new point release.