Setting up a virtualized environment on your own machine is always a headache inducing and risky setup. However, with virtualbox, one can use the vms without changing the OS internals (such as in Xen). The chief disadvantage of using virtualbox directly is that the virtual machine quickly escalates to a huge scale, and if you are cloning/ distributing your virtual machine, it easily becomes a hassle involving both the VM and its virtual hard disk.
However, with Vagrant, one can quickly create, configure and delete virtual machines, similar to a professional cloud environment like Amazon.
According to their documentation; ' Vagrant gives you the tools to build unique development environments
for each project once and then easily tear them down and rebuild them
only when they’re needed so you can save time and frustration.'. The documentation starts with a 5 minute tutorial that demonstrates how easy it is to setup, connect and configure different VM instances.
The configuration is handled by a vargant file, which is a ruby DSL.For the GUI inclined people, Vagrant can also be configured by different provisioners like Puppet or Chef. Thus, developers and project managers can quickly configure and setup environments for different projects.
By easily enabling the developer to directly configure the VM, the development process can be streamlined, in principle with the DevOpts movement.
