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# Vagrant vs. CLI Tools
Virtualization software like VirtualBox and VMware come with command line
utilities for managing the lifecycle of machines on their platform. Vagrant
actually uses many of these utilities internally. The difference between these
CLI tools and Vagrant is that Vagrant provides a declarative, reproducible,
idempotent workflow.
utilities for managing the lifecycle of machines on their platform. Many
people make use of these utilities to write their own automation. Vagrant
actually uses many of these utilities internally.
The difference between these CLI tools and Vagrant is that Vagrant builds
on top of these utilities in a number of ways while still providing a
consistent workflow. Vagrant supports multiple synced folder types, multiple
provisioners to setup the machine, automatic SSH setup, creating HTTP tunnels
into your development environment, and more. All of these can be configured
using a single simple configuration file.
Vagrant still has a number of improvements over manual scripting even if you
ignore all the higher-level features Vagrant provides. The command-line
utilities provided by virtualization software often change each version
or have subtle bugs with workarounds. Vagrant automatically detects the
version, uses the correct flags, and can work around known issues. So if
you're using one version of VirtualBox and a co-worker is using a different
version, Vagrant will still work consistently.
For highly-specific workflows that don't change often, it can still be
beneficial to maintain custom scripts. Vagrant is targeted at building
development environments but some advanced users still use the CLI tools
underneath to do other manual things.

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# Vagrant vs. Docker
Vagrant uses kernel-level isolation whereas Docker uses userland-level
isolation. In practice, this means Vagrant will provide more isolation from your
virtual machines than Docker, but Docker will be faster to boot machines. After
booting, speeds are roughly equivalent.
Vagrant is a tool focused on providing a consistent development environment
workflow across multiple operation systems. Docker is a container management
that can consistently run software as long as a containerization system exists.
Docker also lacks support for certain operating systems (like Windows and BSD).
If your target deployment is a Windows environment, Docker will not provide the
same production parity as a tool like Vagrant.
Containers are generally more lightweight than virtual machines, so starting
and stopping containers is extremely fast. Most common development machines
don't have a containerization system built-in, and Docker uses a virtual machine
with Linux installed to provide that.
Both Vagrant and Docker have a vast library of community-contributed "images" or
"boxes" to choose from.
Currently, Docker lacks support for certain operating systems (such as
Windows and BSD). If your target deployment is one of these operating systems,
Docker will not provide the same production parity as a tool like Vagrant.
Vagrant will allow you to run a Windows development environment on Mac or Linux,
as well.
For microservice heavy environments, Docker can be attractive because you
can easily start a single Docker VM and start many containers above that
very quickly. This is a good use case for Docker. Vagrant can do this as well
with the Docker provider. A primary benefit for Vagrant is a consistent workflow
but there are many cases where a pure-Docker workflow does make sense.
Both Vagrant and Docker have a vast library of community-contributed "images"
or "boxes" to choose from.

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# Vagrant vs. Terraform
Vagrant is a tool for managing virtual machines. [Terraform][terraform] is
another open source tool from [HashiCorp][hashicorp] which enables
infrastructure as code.
Vagrant and [Terraform][terraform] are both projects from [HashiCorp][hashicorp].
Vagrant is a tool focused for managing development environments and
Terraform is a tool for building infrastructure.
Both Vagrant and Terraform use a declarative syntax to express the desired,
final state of a system. Vagrant's focus is on development environments whereas
Terraform's focus is on remote APIs and cloud resources. While Terraform has
provisioners, they are not as full-featured as those in Vagrant. Vagrant cannot
manage cloud resources without third-party plugins.
Terraform can decribe complex sets of infrastructure that exists
locally or remotely. It is focused on building and changing that infrastructure
over time. The minimal aspects of virtual machine lifecycle can be reproduced
in Terraform, sometimes leading to confusion with Vagrant.
Vagrant provides a number of higher level features that Terraform doesn't.
Synced folders, automatic networking, HTTP tunneling, and more are features
provided by Vagrant to ease development environment usage. Because Terraform
is focused on infrastructure management and not development environments,
these features are out of scope for that project.
The primary usage of Terraform is for managing remote resources in cloud
providers such as AWS. Terraform is designed to be able to manage extremely
large infrastructures that span multiple cloud providers. Vagrant is designed
primarily for local development environments that use only a handful of
virtual machines at most.
Vagrant is for development environments. Terraform is for more general
infrastructure management.
[hashicorp]: https://www.hashicorp.com
[terraform]: https://www.terraform.io