Vagrant Cheat Sheet

Reference for Vagrantfile syntax and the vagrant CLI for creating and managing reproducible development VMs.

1 PageBeginnerJan 25, 2026

Basic Vagrantfile

Minimal configuration provisioning a VM with a shell script.

ruby

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/jammy64"  config.vm.hostname = "dev-box"  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080  config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.10"  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|    vb.memory = "2048"    vb.cpus = 2  end  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL    apt-get update    apt-get install -y nginx  SHELLend

Vagrant CLI

Common commands for managing the VM lifecycle.

bash

vagrant init ubuntu/jammy64   # Create a Vagrantfilevagrant up                    # Create and start the VMvagrant ssh                   # SSH into the VMvagrant halt                  # Stop the VMvagrant suspend / resume      # Pause / resume the VMvagrant destroy               # Remove the VM entirelyvagrant reload --provision    # Restart and re-run provisionersvagrant status                # Show VM state

Key Concepts

Core Vagrant building blocks.

box- Base VM image/template that Vagrant clones to create new machines
provider- Backend virtualization engine (virtualbox, vmware, docker, hyperv)
provisioner- Tool used to configure the VM after boot (shell, ansible, chef, puppet)
synced folder- Directory shared between host and guest, mounted automatically
Vagrantfile- Ruby DSL file declaring the machine's configuration

Pro Tip

Use 'config.vm.provision' with the ansible_local provisioner when the host lacks Ansible installed — it installs Ansible inside the guest and runs your existing playbooks unchanged.

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