Vagrant::Persistent-Storage

A Vagrant plugin that creates a persistent storage and attaches it to guest machine.

Requires Virtualbox 5/6

Installation

$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-persistent-storage

Usage

After installing you can set the location and size of the persistent storage.

The following options will create a persistent storage with 5000 MB, named mysql, mounted on /var/lib/mysql, in a volume group called ‘myvolgroup’

config.persistent_storage.enabled = true
config.persistent_storage.location = "~/development/sourcehdd.vdi"
config.persistent_storage.size = 5000
config.persistent_storage.mountname = 'mysql'
config.persistent_storage.filesystem = 'ext4'
config.persistent_storage.mountpoint = '/var/lib/mysql'
config.persistent_storage.volgroupname = 'myvolgroup'

With config.persistent_storage.mountoptions you can change the mount options (default: defaults). An example which sets prjquota option with xfs.

config.persistent_storage.mountname    = 'xfs'
config.persistent_storage.filesystem   = 'xfs'
config.persistent_storage.mountpoint   = '/mnt/xfs'
config.persistent_storage.mountoptions = ['defaults', 'prjquota']

Device defaults to /dev/sdb. For boxes with multiple disks, make sure you increment the drive:

config.persistent_storage.diskdevice = '/dev/sdc'

If you are using LVM and you would prefer to use the disk rather than a partition, you can set the following configuration:

config.persistent_storage.partition = false

When you expect a lot of writes in the disk (the case for /home mountpoints) it is recommended to change the disk variant to Fixed (fixed allocation) instead of the default Standard (dyanamic allocation). The tested types are Standard (default) and Fixed.

config.persistent_storage.variant    = 'Fixed'

If you want to pass a list of options to the underlying VboxManage storageattach call, you can use the config.persistent_storage.attachoptions option. For instance, if you want to enable TRIM support:

config.persistent_storage.mountoptions = ['defaults', 'discard']
config.persistent_storage.attachoptions = ['--discard', 'on']

Every vagrant up will attach this file as hard disk to the guest machine. A vagrant destroy will detach the storage to avoid deletion of the storage by vagrant. A vagrant destroy generally destroys all attached drives. See VBoxManage unregistervm –delete option.

The disk is initialized and added to it’s own volume group as specfied in the config; this defaults to ‘vagrant’. An ext4 filesystem is created and the disk mounted appropriately, with entries added to fstab … subsequent runs will mount this disk with the options specified.

Windows Guests

Windows Guests must use the WinRM communicator by setting vm.communicator = 'winrm'. An additional option is provided to allow you to set the drive letter using:

config.persistent_storage.drive_letter = 'Z'

Options that are irrelevent to Windows are ignored, such as mountname, filesystem, mountpoint and volgroupname.

How Is The Storage Created?

Based on the configuration provided, during a vagrant up a bash script is generated and uploaded to $tmpdir/disk_operations_#{mnt_name}.sh (Linux) or disk_operations_#{mnt_name}.ps1 (Windows). If the box has not been previously provisioned the script is executed on a vagrant up. To force the script to be executed again you can run vagrant provision or if you have halted the box, vagrant up --provision.

The outcome of the script being run is placed in the home drive of the vagrant user in a file called disk_operation_log.txt.

Optional settings

config.persistent_storage.part_type_code = '82'

Troubleshooting

If your box is not using LVM you must set config.persistent_storage.use_lvm = false.

Supported Providers

• Only the VirtualBox provider is supported.

Contributors

• madAndroid
• Jeremiah Snapp
• Hiroya Ito
• joshuata
• Ciprian Zaharie
• aishahalim
• Dick Tang
• dsmaher
• Marsup
• k2s
• vvavrychuk
• Lars Hupfeldt Nielsen
• Chen Yu Pao
• Kris Reese
• Henry N.
• fredleger
• Sebastian Wendel
• Ben Phegan
• Philipp Schrader
• Alex Tomkins
• Marcin Wolny
• Adam Huffman
• caio2k
• Francesco
• Dimitris Aragiorgis
• Symaxion
• Alex Pyrgiotis
• qdetweiler
• Jacob Christensen
• roccotigger

TODO

• There’s Always Something to Do
• Add more options (controller, port, etc.)