Overview of the Skytap Vagrant Provider

Vagrant is a powerful tool for software development. With simple commands, Vagrant can quickly provision, run, and control virtual machines. With the Skytap provider for Vagrant, you can remove local storage and processing constraints of running VMs locally by using Vagrant commands to create, run, and control virtual machines in Skytap.

Watch Demo of the Skytap Provider for Vagrant

Process overview

The Skytap provider creates new virtual machines in Skytap based on any existing Skytap environment or template. It can even combine VMs from multiple Skytap templates into a single environment.

To use the Skytap provider, you:

Install Vagrant and the Vagrant provider on either your local machine or a VM within Skytap.
Prepare one or more Skytap VMs to use as “base boxes” with Vagrant; you can use any VM in your Skytap account. The VMs should be:
- Powered off in Skytap.
- In the same Skytap region as the other VMs you plan to include in the Vagrant-created environment.
- Configured for SSH or WinRM access. For Linux VMs: We recommend that you store the SSH credentials in the VM using VM Credentials. Use the “user name / password” format. Optionally, you can use Vagrant’s instructions to store other SSH configuration information in the Vagrantfile.
Build or download a Vagrantfile that includes URLs for the Skytap VMs you prepared, as well as information about how the VMs should be configured (network, file, and hardware settings).
Use vagrant up to create a new environment in Skytap based on the Vagrantfile. Vagrant makes a copy of each Skytap VM to include in the new environment.
Use other supported Vagrant commands to control the environment, sync files to it, share it, or delete it.

How it works

The Skytap provider securely communicates with Skytap; it translates native Vagrant commands into Skytap REST API calls.

When the Skytap provider is installed on your local machine, it connects to Skytap via a Skytap VPN connection.
Alternately, you can install the Skytap provider on a Skytap VM; in this case, the provider connects to VMs through secure cross-environment network connections (ICNR).

What you can do with the Skytap provider for Vagrant

The Skytap provider exposes unique Skytap functionality through Vagrant. The Skytap provider can:

Create single VMs or multiple-VM environments
Access, start, stop, and delete entire Skytap environments or subsets of VMs within those environments.
Customize the VM hardware settings.
SSH into VMs created with Vagrant.
Sync folders between your local machine and Skytap VMs using NFS mounts.
Use port forwarding to send network traffic on a local port to a Skytap VM.
Publish and control access to an environment with the Skytap web interface.

Getting started

To get started, see the articles below: