---
layout: getting_started
title: Getting Started - Why Vagrant?
---
# Why Vagrant?

Web developers use virtual environments every day with their web applications. From EC2 and Rackspace Cloud to specialized
solutions such as EngineYard and Heroku, virtualization is the tool of choice for easy deployment and infrastructure management.
Vagrant aims to take those very same principals and put them to work in the heart of the application lifecycle.
By providing easy to configure, lightweight, reproducible, and portable virtual machines targeted at
development environments, Vagrant helps maximize your productivity and flexibility.

Vagrant is a development tool which stands on the shoulders of giants, using tried and
proven technologies to achieve its magic. Vagrant uses [Sun's VirtualBox](http://www.virtualbox.org)
to create its virtual machines and then uses [Chef](http://www.opscode.org/chef) to provision them.

## Benefits of Vagrant

### For Solo Developers

### For Teams

### For Companies

If you've ever maintained a large web application one of the hardest parts is onboarding new resources.
Message queues, caching, database servers and other infrastructure pieces mean a lot of installation
and a lot more configuration (see [Insanity](http://www.robbyonrails.com/articles/2010/02/08/installing-ruby-on-rails-passenger-postgresql-mysql-oh-my-zsh-on-snow-leopard-fourth-edition)). Vagrant gives you the tools to build a development environment once and then easily distribute it to
new members of your development team so you can get them to work and saving time, money and frustration.