While creating an isolated environment can I use Vagrant or Docker

Question

I use Ubuntu for development and deployment and have a need for creating an isolated environment.

I am considering either Vagrant or Docker for this purpose. What are the pros and cons, or how do these solutions compare?

Answer 1

One of the really great things with Vagrant is the integration with Puppet/Chef/shell scripts for automating configuration. If you're using one of these options to configure your production environment, you can create a development environment which is as close to identical as you're going to get, and this is exactly what you want.

The other great thing with Vagrant is that you can version your Vagrantfile along with your application code. This means that everyone else on your team can share this file and you're guaranteed that everyone is working with the same environment configuration.

Interestingly, Vagrant and Docker may actually be complimentary. Vagrant can be extended to support different virtualization providers, and it may be possible that Docker is one such provider which gets support in the near future. See https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/404 for recent discussion on the topic.