The downside to this approach is that each virtual machine includes not only your application and all of its libraries but the entire guest operating system as well, which may well be tens of GBs in size. The Vagrantfile tells Vagrant how to set up the virtual machine and what scripts need to be run in order to provision the environment. Each environment has its own virtual machine and is configured by the use of a Vagrantfile. This is done using what is called “virtualization” software such as VirtualBox or VMware. It uses virtual machines (VMs) to run a virtual environment independent of the host machine. Vagrant utilizes a much simpler architecture than Docker. Vagrant vs Docker – High Level Comparison

In this post, we’re going to look at the difference between Vagrant and Docker and show you how to set up a WordPress development environment in each. Docker works in a fundamentally different way from virtual machines by using containers to package code and dependencies together. These days Docker has become the de facto solution for virtualizing development environments and devops in general. Hosting environments become ephemeral and can be thrown away when no longer useful.Environments can be started and stopped as required.Software stacks can be shared with other people and be reproduced automatically with ease.Software stacks are entirely independent from the machine you are working on.

There are many benefits to using virtualization over installing software directly on your local machine (as MAMP does for example): Before Docker came on the scene Vagrant was the go-to solution for creating development environments that can be configured independently of your machine and shared with a team.

Docker for mac vagrant