Appendix. Getting set up
This appendix covers setting up VirtualBox, Vagrant, and the RabbitMQ in Depth Vagrant virtual machine (VM) that contains everything needed to test code samples, experiment, and follow along with the book.
VirtualBox is the virtualization software we’ll use to run all of the examples, and Vagrant is an automation tool for setting up the VM. You’ll need to install these two applications, and then you’ll be able to set up the RabbitMQ in Depth VM by downloading a zip file containing the Vagrant configuration and Chef cookbooks. Once they’re downloaded and extracted, you can start the VM by running a single command, and you’ll be able to interactively test the code listings and examples in the book.
It’s a fairly straightforward process in Windows, OS X, and Linux designed to keep the steps for following along with the book to a minimum. To get started, you’ll need to download and install VirtualBox.
VirtualBox is a free virtualization product originally developed by Sun Micro-systems and now made available by Oracle. It runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris systems and provides the underlying VM that will be used for this book.
Setting up VirtualBox is very straightforward. You can download it from http://virtualbox.org. Just navigate to the Downloads page, chose the VirtualBox platform package for your operating system type, and download the installation package for your computer (figure A.1).