Managing the VM

We are going to use Vagrant to manage the VM as far as we are concerned. The execution environment for the VM is handled by VirtualBox for us.

Starting the VM

To start the VM we will do the following:

vagrant up

This will boot and configure the VM acccording to the Vagrantfile.

Suspending the VM

When you are done with development for a while, it is a good idea to suspend the VM. This will prevent your laptop battery from draining too quickly when not developing.

vagrant suspend

This will save the state of the VM and stop it from running.

Stoping the VM

If you need to issue the shutdown command in the VM:

vagrant halt

This completly shutsodwn the VM and the next time you do an up it will take a bit longer than from a suspend.

Destroy the VM

If you run into issues, often you can destroy the VM and restart.

This is one of the big advantages to Vagrant

WARNING: This will delete the VM and all data with it. Including the database that is in the VM

vagrant destroy

It will ask you for a confirmation, before it deletes the VM.