HashiCorp Packer automates the creation of machine images, coming out of the box with support to build images for Amazon EC2, CloudStack, DigitalOcean, Docker, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure, QEMU, VirtualBox, and VMware.
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HashiCorp Vagrant
Score 10.0 out of 10
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Vagrant is a tool designed to create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable development environments. It leverages a declarative configuration file which describes all software requirements, packages, operating system configuration, and users.
We use packer to generate new machine images for multiple platforms on every change to our Configuration Management tools like Chef/Puppet/Ansible It's act single tool for Image building for Multi-provider like AWS/Azure/GCP Helps to achieve Dev/Prod Parity Packer itself doesn't have a state like Terraform. You can't do packer output AMI ID. If you have a scenario where you want to maintain the state for images it would be tough to manage via Packer.
I would recommend this tool to a colleague looking to create a repeatably deployable local dev environment based on their staging and production environments. I would recommend this mostly for individuals or teams requiring environments with server-side software such as php, et al. There are likely less processor-heavy and smaller tools for simpler projects.
Vagrant is decentralized so anyone can make a container package to get a project started. you aren't limited to wordpress, or even one style of wordpress install (you can make a sage.io wordpress environment).
Vagrant easily lets you set ports and URLs for local development.
I have yet to have a problem with Vagrant, as opposed to MAMP and DesktopServer, which both gave me SQL or other issues.
Because Vagrant is a low-level tool with many ways to configure it, there is a steep learning curve. You don't just have to learn (or install) Vagrant, but also Virtualbox, Ansible and possibly some Vagrant plugins to keep boxes up to date.
Support on Windows doesn't seem great. I'm a Mac guy, so it's been very difficult getting things to work as expected when a developer wants to work on Windows.
Perhaps I didn't configure it correctly, but the default shared folders are not the best for performance. There are also frequently weird issues regarding file permissions.
There are lot of tools in market which does the job for Image creation but all of them are not complete Machine/Image as a code. All other alternatives can create Image partially. Main reason for selecting Packer are Packer is lightweight, portable, and command-line driven Packer helps keep development, staging, and production as similar as possible. Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image Multi-provider portability is the feature to die for
I liked lando better because lando seemed extremely easy to setup compared to other VM's and it seemed faster though that project was simpler. Virtualbox I ran on windows and it has a gui and has often been slow. The vagrant boxes I used did well but had slightly more problems than lando.