HashiCorp Packer vs. HashiCorp Vagrant

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.

Incentivized

If you're writing software, particularly software that depends on other services (web servers or databases for example) then Vagrant is great. I know some people skip Vagrant and just set up virtual machines on their own, but I've found that Vagrant streamlines the process nicely and makes it easy to update or swap out versions. If you're a web developer (which I am) it's amazing. I can have several boxes configured for my different projects and I just spin them up or down based on what I'm working on. One scenario where this might not be ideal is if you're running Vagrant on a computer that has limited resources. Since you're running a virtual machine with its own operating system and such you'll want a host computer with enough RAM, hard drive space and CPU to run the virtual machine properly without killing the performance of the host. The virtual disks can also take up a lot of space if you're not careful so if you have many virtual machines provisioned and don't clean up the old ones that you're not using, you may find that your hard drive is full. Each of my Linux servers take up about 10GB of disk space.

Incentivized

• Multi-provider portability
• Greater testability
• Super fast infrastructure deployment

Incentivized

• Easy to create machines with different OS's, list of them can be found from Vagrant's website with configuration details.
• Flexible configuration, user can determine what software will be pre-installed to machine. Saves time because it doesn't need to be done manually every time.
• Easily manage full environments, not just single machines, with single command.

Incentivized

• Manageability
• Manageability
• Manageability

Incentivized

• Learning curve is steep - It can be challenging for someone to set up initially. After some coaching, the basics come pretty quickly though.
• Relies on external Virtual Machine applications - It would be great if Vagrant itself could run the virtual machine instead of leaning on other virtualization software. This is a small detail, but would make setup simple.
• Better support for running

Incentivized

We are happy with the use of Packer in our organization. Apart from manageability, I don't find any other drawback with Packer.

Incentivized

Vagrant is fast, versatile and does exactly what we need it to do: spin up virtual servers for local development fast and without trouble.

Incentivized

It's best for building Image with many features and benefits.

Incentivized

A GUI would be nice for entry level users.

Incentivized

I only once required support and it was very smooth.

Incentivized

I haven't found any issue in Implementation that itself describes how well this tool is built.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Docker has a few advantages, especially with the disk size bloat brought on by Vagrant's hosting an entire OS and project in a VM. It relies on native tools, however, and may not support every software. Vagrant provides uniformity, efficiency and repeatability within team work and for deployment and testing.

Incentivized

• Super fast infrastructure deployment
• Quick turnaround of infrastructure in multiple cloud using single tool.
• Increase productivity by reducing time in infrastructure building.

Incentivized

• Saved lots of time by being able to set up a local env quickly
• Occasionally made troubleshooting bugs harder than it would have been using native Linux
• Clients had issues setting it up, which may have provided us some security in keeping their business

Incentivized