Metabox

Metabox is an enhancement API layer on top of Packer/Vagrant tools to simplify machine image builds and Vagrant VMs management. It hides low-level details of Packer/Vagrant offering a consistent, YAML-based workflow to describe, author and manage Packer images and Vagrant virtual machines.

Initially, metabox was developed by Aleksandr Sapozhkov (@shurick81) and Anton Vishnyakov (@avishnyakov). An early beta version of metabox was designed to provide disposable SharePoint environments for the SPMeta2 project late 2017. A few month later, we pushed metabox further enabling automation of SharePoint 2013/2016 deployments with a consistent, repeatable and disposable workflow on Windows 2012, 2012 R2, 2016 using SQL 2012, 2014, 2016 and various versions of Visual Studio on top: 2013, 2015 and 2017.

Metabox in details

At a glance, metabox glues together Packer/Vagrant and offers additional features on top:

YAML documents as authoring and management experience:

• YAML documents to define Packer builds and Vagrant VMs (sick!)
• YAML documents parametrisation: either via ENV variables or by re-using other YAML values

The enhanced markup on top of Packer/Vagrant markup:

• YAML markup gets translates into Packer JSON or Vagrant VM setup
• Custom YAML sections simplifies complexity of default Packer/Vagrant setups

Built-in file download capabilities:

• YAML document to define which files to download and where to place them
• pre/post download hooks (so you can zip/archive files)
• SHA1 checksum checks to avoid re-downloading

Built-in "VM stack" concept, simplified network and hostname management:

• Vagrant VMs are always come together as a "stack"
• "stack" has got its own, dedicated IP range so you don't have to deal with network at all
• Metabox manages VM's IP address within stack
• Metabox manages VM's hostnames within stack

Built-in support for Packer images:

• Win2012 platform:

  • Win2012 SOE (standard operation system)
  • Win2012 + SharePoint 2013 RTM

• Win2012 R2 platform:

  • Win2012 R2 SOE (standard operation system)
  • Win2012 R2 + SharePoint 2013 SP1

• Win2016 platform:

  • Win2016 SOE (standard operation system)
  • Win2016 + SharePoint 2016 RTM (in progress)

Built-in support for Vagrant VMs:

• DC role - domain controller VM
• client role - a VM joined to DC
• SQL role - a VM joined to DC + SQL 2012, 2014 (2016 in progress)
• SharePoint role - a VM joined to DC + SP2013/SP2013 SP1 (2016 is in progress)

Altogether, metabox offers an end-to-end workflow to build SharePoint environments in fully automated manner. In turns, metabox can also be run under CI/CD pipelines.

Getting started guides

• Windows 2012 stack (in progress)
• Windows 2012-R2 stack
• Windows 2016 stack (in progress)

Tech overview

Metabox itself is a Ruby-based application. The following technology stack is used to get all things up and running:

• Ruby - metabox is written in Ruby
• Rake - metabox exposes a bunch of Rake tasks
• Packer/Vagrant - metabox orchestrates Packer/Vagrant
• Docker - metabox is developed under a Docker container

While it may seem crazy, this technology stack allows Metabox to work on various platforms. Here is what we tested so far:

• Windows 2008
• Windows 10
• Windows 2016
• MacOS

Furthermore, Packer/Vagrant provision is made using the following tech:

• bash scripts / ServerSpec (for metabox Jenkins2 CI)
• PowerShell, Pester
• PowerShell DSC (various configurations for DC, SQL, SharePoint DSC)
• Ruby Sinatra (to expose files via HTTP server to Vagrant VMs)

Feature requests, support and contributions

Metabox is a part of the SPMeta2 ecosystem. In case you have unexpected issues or keen to see new features just create a new GitHub issue and check documentation available:

• Metabox issue tracker
• Metabox documentation