Using Vagrant and Ansible
=========================

.. _vagrant_intro:

Introduction
````````````

`Vagrant <http://vagrantup.com/>`_ is a tool to manage virtual machine
environments, and allows you to configure and use reproducible work
environments on top of various virtualization and cloud platforms.
It also has integration with Ansible as a provisioner for these virtual
machines, and the two tools work together well.

This guide will describe how to use Vagrant 1.7+ and Ansible together.

If you're not familiar with Vagrant, you should visit `the documentation
<http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/>`_.

This guide assumes that you already have Ansible installed and working.
Running from a Git checkout is fine. Follow the :doc:`intro_installation`
guide for more information.

.. _vagrant_setup:

Vagrant Setup
`````````````

The first step once you've installed Vagrant is to create a ``Vagrantfile``
and customize it to suit your needs. This is covered in detail in the Vagrant
documentation, but here is a quick example that includes a section to use the
Ansible provisioner to manage a single machine:

.. code-block:: ruby

  # This guide is optimized for Vagrant 1.7 and above.
  # Although versions 1.6.x should behave very similarly, it is recommended
  # to upgrade instead of disabling the requirement below.
  Vagrant.require_version ">= 1.7.0"

  Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|

    config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64"

    # Disable the new default behavior introduced in Vagrant 1.7, to
    # ensure that all Vagrant machines will use the same SSH key pair.
    # See https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5005
    config.ssh.insert_key = false

    config.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
      ansible.verbose = "v"
      ansible.playbook = "playbook.yml"
    end
  end

Notice the ``config.vm.provision`` section that refers to an Ansible playbook
called ``playbook.yml`` in the same directory as the ``Vagrantfile``. Vagrant
runs the provisioner once the virtual machine has booted and is ready for SSH
access.

There are a lot of Ansible options you can configure in your ``Vagrantfile``.
Visit the `Ansible Provisioner documentation
<http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/provisioning/ansible.html>`_ for more
information.

.. code-block:: bash

    $ vagrant up

This will start the VM, and run the provisioning playbook (on the first VM
startup).


To re-run a playbook on an existing VM, just run:

.. code-block:: bash

    $ vagrant provision

This will re-run the playbook against the existing VM.

Note that having the ``ansible.verbose`` option enabled will instruct Vagrant
to show the full ``ansible-playbook`` command used behind the scene, as
illustrated by this example:

.. code-block:: bash

      $ PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLOR=true ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=false ANSIBLE_SSH_ARGS='-o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s' ansible-playbook --private-key=/home/someone/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key --user=vagrant --connection=ssh --limit='machine1' --inventory-file=/home/someone/coding-in-a-project/.vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory/vagrant_ansible_inventory playbook.yml

This information can be quite useful to debug integration issues and can also
be used to manually execute Ansible from a shell, as explained in the next
section.

.. _running_ansible:

Running Ansible Manually
````````````````````````

Sometimes you may want to run Ansible manually against the machines. This is
faster than kicking ``vagrant provision`` and pretty easy to do.

With our ``Vagrantfile`` example, Vagrant automatically creates an Ansible
inventory file in ``.vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory/vagrant_ansible_inventory``.
This inventory is configured according to the SSH tunnel that Vagrant
automatically creates. A typical automatically-created inventory file for a
single machine environment may look something like this:

.. code-block:: none

    # Generated by Vagrant

    default ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=2222

If you want to run Ansible manually, you will want to make sure to pass
``ansible`` or ``ansible-playbook`` commands the correct arguments, at least
for the *username*, the *SSH private key* and the *inventory*.

Here is an example using the Vagrant global insecure key (``config.ssh.insert_key``
must be set to ``false`` in your ``Vagrantfile``):

.. code-block:: bash

    $ ansible-playbook --private-key=~/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key -u vagrant -i .vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory/vagrant_ansible_inventory playbook.yml

Here is a second example using the random private key that Vagrant 1.7+
automatically configures for each new VM (each key is stored in a path like
``.vagrant/machines/[machine name]/[provider]/private_key``):

.. code-block:: bash

    $ ansible-playbook --private-key=.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key -u vagrant -i .vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory/vagrant_ansible_inventory playbook.yml

Advanced Usages
```````````````

The "Tips and Tricks" chapter of the `Ansible Provisioner documentation
<http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/provisioning/ansible.html>`_ provides detailed information about more advanced Ansible features like:

  - how to parallely execute a playbook in a multi-machine environment
  - how to integrate a local ``ansible.cfg`` configuration file

.. seealso::

    `Vagrant Home <http://www.vagrantup.com/>`_
        The Vagrant homepage with downloads
    `Vagrant Documentation <http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/>`_
        Vagrant Documentation
    `Ansible Provisioner <http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/provisioning/ansible.html>`_
        The Vagrant documentation for the Ansible provisioner
    `Vagrant Issue Tracker <https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Aprovisioners%2Fansible>`_
        The open issues for the Ansible provisioner in the Vagrant project
    :doc:`playbooks`
        An introduction to playbooks

