Project "Izanamee" (internal working title, external branding tbd) is a set of virtual machines based on a similar family used internally at Capital One for layered Java development environments. We are contributing these to the Open Source community to help facilitate a quick-start, level playing field for hack-a-thons.

Background

Capital One needed to provide a consistent way in getting development teams setup in the layered environments we support and to automate consistent assemblies from instructions which in some cases spanned multiple pages and hundreds of line-item steps. As we all can attest, this methodology is fragile and brittle at best.

With open source tools such as Vagrant, we have been able to revolutionize the way we could provide and support development environments across the enterprise; culturally, with this approach, we have also been able to seed a DevOps mentality earlier.

Izanamee derives its name from the Japanese goddess (Izanami-no-Mikoto) of both creation and death. We chose it as a nod to the power and flexibility that vagrant up and vagrant destroy provides us. Hats off to Mitchell Hashimoto and the team at [Hashicorp] (https://www.hashicorp.com) for creating and supporting this terrific tool, and for hosting the Atlas public registry of Vagrant images where we are able publish our images.

Izanamee Family of Virtual Machines

There are currently two virtual machine images built from a base of ubunty/trusty64 (14.04):

• Headless (No GUI, 1Gb image):

• Docker

• Git & Subversion

• Node/NPM

• Oracle 7 & 8 JDK

• Maven & Gradle

• Tomcat 7 & 8

• Desktop (GUI, 2Gb image):

• Inventory of Headless +

• Xubuntu desktop

• Spring Tool Suite (STS) IDE & relevant plugins

• Firefox

• Chrome

For specifics on package versions, please visit the Release History.

Host System Requirements

• Headless:

• For Docker and/or Java development, we recommend having at least 8Gb RAM on your host device as we allocate 4Gb RAM by default.

• Less RAM is needed for microservices development in languages like Node, Python or Go. Tune this setting in the Vagrantfile.

• We generally recommend having 10-20Gb free disk.

• Desktop:

• For Docker and/or Java development, we recommend having 16Gb RAM on your host device as we allocate 8Gb RAM by default for the guest. Tune as needed in the Vagrantfile.

• Less RAM is needed for microservices development in languages like Node, Python or Go. Tune this setting in the Vagrantfile.

• We generally recommend having 15-25Gb free disk.

• If you are running a supporting GPU, we recommend trying the 3D acceleration settings available in VirtualBox (see the Vagrantfile).

Here are the prerequisites which you'll first need to install before you can begin using the Izanamee family of virtual machines:

• Manual Install:

  • Git
  • VirtualBox
  • Vagrant

• Mac OSX via Homebrew:

  $ # if Homebrew is not installed
  $ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
  
  $ # update Homebrew if it was already installed
  $ brew update
  
  $ # if Cask is not installed
  $ brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask
  
  $ # if Git is not installed
  $ brew install git
  
  $ # installs Vagrant & VirtualBox
  $ brew cask install vagrant virtualbox
  

• Windows via Chocolatey:

  NB: If you have previously installed Git, Vagrant & VirtualBox via the .msi installer, you may need to uninstall it if you would like to use Chocolatey going forward which is recommended for non-managed desktops.

  To install Chocolatey, open an administrative cmd.exe command prompt:

  C:\> @powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex
  ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))"
  && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin
  

  To install dependencies, open an administrative cmd.exd command prompt:

  C:\> REM installs Git, Vagrant & VirtualBox
  C:\> choco install git vagrant virtualbox
  
  C:\> REM if you experience errors with "vagrant ssh" you may neeed to install ssh in your PATH, e.g.
  C:\> set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin
  

How to Install the Izanamee Virtual Machines

The recommended pattern for installing and using an Izanamee virtual machine is to copy the provided Vagrantfile into the base of your own GitHub repository.

1. Create a GitHub repository

2. Execute the steps below substituting ghuser with your GitHub username and your_repo with the name of the repository you created:

   $ git clone https://github.com/ghuser/your_repo.git
   $ cd your_repo
   
   $ # if you want to use the headless image, execute the following
   $ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/izanamee/BigRedHacks2015/master/Vagrantfiles/headless/Vagrantfile
   
   $ # if you want to use the desktop image, execute the following
   $ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/izanamee/BigRedHacks2015/master/Vagrantfiles/desktop/Vagrantfile
   
   $ vagrant up
   $ vagrant ssh
   

3. If you have chosen the desktop image, the login credentials for the GUI are username: vagrant and password: vagrant.

The Vagrantfile goes into the base of your project because Vagrant will sync the current working directory to the /vagrant directory inside of the Izanamee Virtual Machine. This means you can continue to work on files on your host machine and they will automatically be available within the Izanamee virtual machine. This is especially useful in the case of working on the headless image as you can continue to use GUI IDEs for development. Additionally, you can execute git commands and they will work the same on your host machine and within the Izanamee virtual machine.

Getting started using the Izanamee images

FAQ

FAQs are hosted on our wiki at https://github.com/izanamee/BigRedHacks2015/wiki/FAQ

Acknowledgements

• Core Team: Brent Vukmer, Etienne LaVallee & Keith Gasser
• Executive Sponsors: Jeff Elgin, David Geen, Kranthi Dandamudi, Joelle Rowley & Darren McMahon
• OSS Support: Al Sell
• Key Contributors: Harish Patel, Larry Rosenzweig & Marshall Thompson