115 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
115 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
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---
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page_title: "Vagrant 1.6 Feature Preview: Windows Guests"
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title: "Feature Preview: Windows Guests"
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author: "Mitchell Hashimoto"
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author_url: https://github.com/mitchellh
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---
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Vagrant 1.6 will add a monumental feature to Vagrant: full Windows guest support.
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The ability of Vagrant to manage Windows environments just as easy as
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Linux environments has been requested for years and the time for
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complete, official support has come.
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Please don't mistake guest support for running Vagrant _on Windows_. Vagrant
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has fully supported running on Windows for years, and works great. Vagrant
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1.6 adds support for Vagrant to run Windows within the Vagrant environments
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(in VirtualBox, Hyper-V, EC2, etc.).
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The Windows guest support coming in Vagrant 1.6 allows you to spin up
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Windows environments just as easily as you would Linux environments, and
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lets you use PowerShell scripts, Chef, Puppet, etc. to install and configure
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software.
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And just as Linux has `vagrant ssh` as a first-class citizen, Windows
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guests have `vagrant rdp`, which allow single-command access
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to a complete remote desktop environment to your Windows environment.
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Read on to learn more.
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READMORE
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### Demo
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Seeing is believing, so we've prepared a couple videos below showing
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how easy it is to use Vagrant with Windows guests.
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<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/92487440" width="680" height="382" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/92520901" width="680" height="382" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
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### Windows
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Windows is hugely popular and support for Windows development environments
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has been the most requested feature by far for the recent year.
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The Windows support is as easy to use as the Linux support: you just need
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a box file that has Windows pre-installed, then you `vagrant up`. Synced
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folders, networking, and provisioners all work.
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Vagrant is able to communicate with Windows over either **SSH** or
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**WinRM**. WinRM is more conventional, but if you have Cygwin installed with
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an SSH server, Vagrant is able to use that too.
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The support for WinRM is new in 1.6. For backwards compatibily reasons,
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you must explicitly tell Vagrant when to use WinRM:
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```
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Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
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# ...
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config.vm.communicator = "winrm"
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end
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```
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That is the only change that is necessary for Vagrant to use Windows!
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Vagrant will automatically detect that the operating system in its
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environment is Windows, and will adapt accordingly.
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Provisioners such as shell scripts, Chef, and Puppet are fully supported
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and will run within Windows Vagrant environments. The shell provisioner
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will run PowerShell and batch scripts if it is being used over WinRM.
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### RDP
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Accessing a Windows machine is unlike accessing a Linux machine. The
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primary method for performing administrative tasks on Windows is via
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[Remote Desktop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol).
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For Linux, Vagrant provides `vagrant ssh` for one-command access to
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the machine. We wanted to make accessing a Windows machine just as easy,
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so we've created the `vagrant rdp` command. This command opens an RDP
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client pre-configured to communicate to the Vagrant environment.
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If SSH is available, `vagrant ssh` will still work for Windows.
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To open a PowerShell or command prompt, use `vagrant rdp` to open the
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remote desktop client, then open the appropriate console. This is the
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conventional way to work with remote Windows machines.
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### Thanks vagrant-windows!
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Early in the Vagrant 1.6 development process,
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[Shawn Neal](https://github.com/sneal) and
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[Paul Morton](https://github.com/pmorton) became core committers to
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Vagrant. These are two of the brains behind
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[vagrant-windows](https://github.com/WinRb/vagrant-windows), an impressive
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Vagrant plugin that has been unofficially bringing Windows guest
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support to Vagrant for years.
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The core of the Windows support presented in this feature preview
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today has been from reintegrating vagrant-windows into Vagrant itself.
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Supporting Windows in such a smooth way wouldn't have been possible
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without the work done by these folks, and the public should know of
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their contribution.
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Thank you vagrant-windows team!
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### Next
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This is a huge milestone for Vagrant. At least one person at every
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conference talk given by myself in the past two years has asked me when Vagrant
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will support Windows. I'm excited to finally be able to say "it does now!"
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Next week we'll continue this series with another feature preview.
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The feature we'll be covering next week is a fun one.
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