Start with a simple Vagrantfile. This Vagrantfile defines a box (in this case, an Ubuntu image) and a Docker provisioner block:

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :
VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"

Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "puppetlabs/ubuntu-14.04-64-nocm"
           config.vm.provision "shell", inline:"apt-get install -y mysql-client"

  config.vm.provision "docker" do |d|
    d.pull_images "library/mysql"
    d.run 'library/mysql',
          args: '-e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password -p 3306:3306'
  end
end

This Vagrantfile also defines the Docker provisioner block. In this case, the block specifies the image to be pulled as well as a run command that will be executed on system startup.

The image being pulled is the mysql image from the Docker Hub repository, the run command is similar to using Docker's command-line tools. In this case, the run command specifies an environment variable (MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD) and defines a port mapping from the container to the host.

Start the Vagrant machine with a vagrant up command. When the Docker provisioner starts, the provisioner will install the latest version of the Docker runtime and start containers listed with the Docker run command.

Verify that the Docker command works by accessing the virtual machine with the vagrant ssh command and executing docker ps. The process listing will show a running MySQL container:

While we have an open terminal, obtain the IP address of the virtual machine (if this is not a fixed IP machine) with the ipconfig command.

From the host operating system, access the MySQL database with the mysql client command line, making sure that you have a mysql client installed on your host operating system: