This is the first part of a tutorial series showing how to use Vagrant with Tiktalik.com cloud computing platform.

In this series we will teach you what Vagrant is, how to use it with recently released Tiktalik.com provider for Vagrant and how it can speed up your development time.

About Vagrant

Vagrant is a tool for configuring and deploying multiple development environments.
It works on Linux, Mac and Windows and it uses VirtualBox for the virtualization needs.  Thanks to modular architecture it can be extended with plugins and VirtualBox virtualization can be replaced with Tiktalik.com cloud hosting!

Lets assume you have a Windows laptop. Thanks to Vagrant you can have a Linux-based environment up and runing in no time with all necessary packages installed using provisioning mechanism built-in into Vagrant.  All this without dual booting or mundane process of Linux installation.

Installing Tiktalik.com Vagrant provider plugin

The tutorial assumes you have already installed Vagrant.  If not, please refer to Vagrant documentation, installation process is described there really well:

http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/installation/index.html

To install the plugin just run the following command:

$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-tiktalik

Installing the 'vagrant-tiktalik' plugin. This can take a few minutes...
Installed the plugin 'vagrant-tiktalik (0.0.1)'!

 

It really can take a few minutes as installation process uses connects to rubygems.org servers to fetch all necessary ruby gems.

Next you will have to install so called Vagrant box for Tiktalik provider with
the following command:

 

$ vagrant box add dummy https://github.com/tiktalik-cloud/vagrant-tiktalik/raw/master/box/tiktalik.box
Downloading or copying the box...
Extracting box...e: 0/s, Estimated time remaining: --:--:--)
Successfully added box 'dummy' with provider 'tiktalik'!

 

Now you are ready to use Tiktalik instances with Vagrant!

Project configuration

To use Tiktalik platform instead of VirtualBox you will need to create regular vagrant configuration file -- Vagrantfile -- and fill some Tiktalik-specific settings.

Log in to administration panel to get all necessary keys and UUIDs.
You will need:

• API key and secret https://tiktalik.com/panel/#apikeys
• Instance UUID, an id of operating system you want to run on your instance.
• Full list of available OSes is here: https://tiktalik.com/panel/#templates
• Debian 6.0.7 has following UUID 90783010-5e1b-4948-9b33-bfb4a4502617
• UUID of already uploaded SSH key. Get it from https://tiktalik.com/panel/#sshkeys

With all these UUIDs you are ready to prepare Vagrantfile.  You can create default one with the following Vagrant command:

$ vagrant init

Or just use your favourite editor and paste the following, filling in your information where necessary:

Vagrant.configure('2') do |config|
  config.vm.provider :tiktalik do |provider, override|
    # path to private ssh key, public one has to me uploaded to
    # tiktalik.com and it's UUID provided below as `provider.ssh_key`
    override.ssh.private_key_path = '~/.ssh/id_dsa'

    override.vm.box = 'tiktalik'

    # hostname for your instance, ie vagrant-host.youraccount.p2.tiktalik.com
    override.vm.hostname = 'vagrant-host'

    # api credentials, get them from https://tiktalik.com/panel/#apikeys
    provider.api_key = 'api key'
    provider.api_secret = 'api secret'

    # system image UUID, this one is for Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS 64-bit<
    # get more ids from https://tiktalik.com/panel/#templates<
    provider.image = '4a2b3e72-47f1-4e88-b482-1834478ade28'

    # your SSH key UUID, get one from https://tiktalik.com/panel/#sshkeys
    provider.ssh_key = 'here goes ssh key uuid'
  end
end

Save the file and your are ready to fire up your first Tiktalik instance using Vagrant:

 

$ vagrant up --provider=tiktalik

 

This process can take some time. Check administration panel to watch progress.
If all goes well you will see the following:

 

Bringing machine 'default' up with 'tiktalik' provider...
[default] Launching an instance with the following settings...
[default]  -- Image: 4a2b3e72-47f1-4e88-b482-1834478ade28
[default]  -- Hostname: vagrant-default
[default]  -- Size: 0.5
[default]  -- SSH key: d5c6b671-6cba-41fe-9020-5d5e1dda85f9
[default]  -- Networks: ["212c7fd1-6018-41ff-9a01-a37956517237"]
[default] Waiting for instance to become "ready"...
[default] Waiting for SSH to become available...
[default] Machine is booted and ready for use!
[default] Rsyncing folder: /your-path/your-directory/ => /vagrant

 

Up and running!

All basic Vagrant commands are supported, so you can:

• log in into your instance with: vagrant ssh
• destroy it with: vagrant destroy
• check its status with: vagrant status

If you have any questions feel free to drop us an email kontakt@tiktalik.com
Don't forget to check out our Facebook profile https://www.facebook.com/TiktalikCloud and to follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/TiktalikCloud !

What's next?

In the next part of this tutorial we will show how easy is to do basic provisioning  of your Vagrant-managed Tiktalik instance.