Bring up VMs with Vagrant/VMware on Windows

09 November 2023 - 4 mins read time
Tags: vagrant vmware vm ubuntu linux python vscode

In this blog post we’ll see how to install and configure the latest version of Vagrant on Windows to use VMware as a virtual machine (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS) provider.

What is Vagrant?

Vagrant (HashiCorp) enables users to quickly bring up development environments according to a pattern defined in a Vagrantfile.

A Vagrantfile is a Ruby file that describes the virtual machine as well as its configuration and provisioning.

Vagrant can run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, and supports popular desktop hypervisors such as VMware, VirtualBox, HyperV, etc.

Prerequisites

Vagrant pre-configuration

Open a cmd and install vagrant-vmware-desktop utility:

$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-vmware-desktop

Create a vagrant folder in your user profile:

$ md "%USERPROFILE%\<vagrant_folder>"

Where <vagrant_folder> is the name of the folder. For example:

$ md "%USERPROFILE%\ubuntu-vagrant"

Create the shared folder:

$ md "%USERPROFILE%\<shared_folder>"

Where <shared_folder> is the name of the shared folder. For example:

$ md "%USERPROFILE%\ubuntu-projects"

Download the files and scripts provided, unzip and open a cmd inside the folder.

Copy Vagrantfile, python-install.sh, vagrant-start.bat, vagrant-stop.bat to the vagrant folder (ubuntu-vagrant), and .vscode to the shared folder (ubuntu-projects):

$ copy Vagrantfile "%USERPROFILE%\ubuntu-vagrant"
$ copy python-install.sh "%USERPROFILE%\ubuntu-vagrant"
$ copy vagrant-start.bat "%USERPROFILE%\ubuntu-vagrant"
$ copy vagrant-stop.bat "%USERPROFILE%\ubuntu-vagrant"
$ xcopy /hievry .vscode "%USERPROFILE%\ubuntu-projects\.vscode"

Then move to the vagrant folder:

$ cd "%USERPROFILE%\ubuntu-vagrant"

Before starting our VM, have a look at the Vagrantfile and modify the variables, especially:

SHARED_UBU="python-dev"
SHARED_HOST="ubuntu-projects"

Where:

Vagrant uses a base image, known as box, to quietly clone a virtual machine. Specifying the box to use for your Vagrant environment is always the first step after creating a new Vagrantfile:

config.vm.box = "generic/ubuntu2204"

Available boxes are hosted on the HashiCorp’s Vagrant Cloud box catalog.

The box catalog

On the first run only, provisioning is run:

config.vm.provision :shell, path: "python-install.sh", privileged: true

In this case a sh script is automatically run on the VM to install Python 3.9. To skip the execution of the script just comment out this line.

Vagrant Up!

Let’s install the base box, i.e. Ubuntu 22.04:

$ vagrant box add generic/ubuntu2204

When prompted, choose vmware_desktop!

With your Vagrantfile in place, you can now boot your first test environment by using the following command:

$ vagrant up --provider vmware_desktop --provision
Bringing up the VM...

Where:

(OPTIONAL) You can create desktop shortcuts to start and stop commands running 02-create-vm-shortcuts.ps1 via PowerShell:

$ Powershell.exe -executionpolicy remotesigned -File 02-create-vm-shortcuts.ps1

VS Code – SSH config

vagrant ssh-config > %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\config

The following command output a valid configuration for an SSH config file to SSH into the running Vagrant machine from ssh directly (instead of using vagrant ssh), i.e. you will be able to access the VM directly from VS Code (don’t forget to install Remote - SSH extension).

SSH into the vagrant machine

(OPTIONAL) You can go ahead and configure VS Code/Python by installing the following (suggested) extensions:

Automated installation! :sunglasses:

You can lazily execute all the steps above by running the 01-vagrant-install.bat! :D

“HGFS issue after updating kernel drivers”

vagrant plugin install vagrant-vmware-desktop

Credits

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