1. Install [VirtualBox] (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)

2. Install [Vagrant] (http://www.vagrantup.com/downloads) - Vagrant is a provisioning system that sets up the virtual machine.

3. If you don't already have it, install [git] (https://git-scm.com/downloads)

4. cd to the directory where you want to house the project, and then clone the vagrant setup: git clone https://github.com/expfactory/expfactory-vm.git

5. cd into the vm directory: cd expfactory-vm

6. (instruction here for cloning/generating experiment)

7. set up the vagrant VM (which may take a little while): vagrant up

8. Step 7 will automatically deploy the infrastructure to the configuration on Amazon that you have specified.

If you wish to log into the virtual machine and programatically access the application, you can do so with:

  vagrant ssh

Make sure you have the most up-to-date version of vagrant, and install vagrant-aws. If you do not, you will see this error (version 1.6.5)

   vagrant-share can't be installed without vagrant login (RuntimeError)

After updating:

  vagrant --version
  Vagrant 1.7.2

Then you should install vagrant-aws, which will allow you to provision the Amazon machine.

  sudo vagrant plugin install vagrant-aws
  Installing the 'vagrant-aws' plugin. This can take a few minutes...
  Installed the plugin 'vagrant-aws (0.6.0)'!

You then need to add an aws compatible box. I found this box on the vagrant-aws plugin github repository:

  vagrant box add aws https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant-aws/raw/master/dummy.box

The vagrantfile included in this repo has instructions to provision the machine on Amazon using this box. Then to launch the instance:

  vagrant up --provider=aws