website/www: 1.6 feature preview: global status and control

website/www/source/blog/2014-04-15-feature-preview-vagrant-1-6-global-status.html.markdown

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+---
+page_title: "Vagrant 1.6 Feature Preview: Global Status and Control"
+title: "Feature Preview: Global Status and Control"
+author: "Mitchell Hashimoto"
+author_url: https://github.com/mitchellh
+---
+
+Vagrant 1.5 was released just a month ago, but we already have big changes
+lined up for Vagrant 1.6. To prepare you for the release of 1.6, we're
+restarting our weekly "feature preview" blog post series to cover the new
+features that are on the way.
+
+The first new feature we'll be covering is something we're calling
+_global status and control_.
+
+Global status introduces a new `global-status` command to Vagrant that
+will show you the status of all created Vagrant environments on your system.
+You'll never again forget what Vagrant environments are running, not
+running, or using resources on your system.
+
+Global control lets you use a unique ID assigned to each of your Vagrant
+environments to control it from any directory, not only the directory
+where the Vagrantfile is. This is useful in many situations, but perhaps
+this is most useful when you forget to destroy a Vagrant environment. You
+can now destroy that Vagrant environment from anywhere!
+
+With these two features Vagrant environment management becomes much easier.
+
+Read on to learn more.
+
+READMORE
+
+### Global Status
+
+A new command `global-status` is available in Vagrant 1.6. This command
+tracks all _created_ Vagrant environments. An example of the output is
+shown below:
+
+```
+$ vagrant global-status
+id       name    provider           state              directory
+---------------------------------------------------------------------
+4174bb6  web     virtualbox         stopped            c:/hashicorp/foo
+72a2e4d  default vmware_workstation running            c:/hashicorp/bar
+865a979  default virtualbox         suspended          c:/hashicorp/baz
+```
+
+Global status gives you a few bits of information about the machine:
+an ID, the name and provider of the machine, the last known state,
+and the directory it last saw that machine.
+
+This at-a-glance information is enough to tell you what is and isn't
+running. To get more information about an environment, you can go to
+the directory for that machine and use the normal `vagrant` commands to
+inspect the environment.
+
+Or, you can use global control, covered next.
+
+### Global Control
+
+Global control lets you control a Vagrant environment from any directory,
+not only the directory where the Vagrantfile for that environment exists.
+
+In Vagrant 1.5 and earlier, you had to be in the same directory as the
+Vagrantfile, or any sub-directory of the Vagrantfile. With Vagrant 1.6,
+you can use the ID from `global-status` to control the machine.
+
+For example, if you want to SSH into one of the machines from above, you
+can be in any terminal and do this:
+
+```
+$ vagrant ssh 72a2e4d
+Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.8.0-29-generic x86_64)
+
+vagrant@vagrant:~$
+```
+
+The ID "72a2e4d" is from the ID column in the `global-status` output
+above. You can use this ID for any Vagrant command, such as `destroy`,
+`up`, `suspend`, etc.
+
+In addition to the built-in commands, using an ID should work with
+any existing Vagrant plugins as well without any modifications.
+
+### Next
+
+Vagrant 1.6 has some huge features. We're starting off this feature
+preview series with one of the smaller features, but it is still incredibly
+useful.
+
+Watch out next week for the next post in the feature preview series, where
+we'll be covering what I think is a monumental feature addition to Vagrant.