Vagrant

vagrant init: creates Vagrantfile in current directory
vagrant box add <environment>: add box to environment (e.g. hashicorp/precise32). Find more boxes at HashiCorp's Atlas box catalog
vagrant ssh: login to vm
vagrant status and vagrant global-status: see which vm's are running locally and globally
vagrant reload: reload vm
vagrant suspend: save the current running state of vm and stop it.
vagrant halt: gracefully shut down OS and power down
vagrant destroy: remove all traces of the vm from system

Files synced in /vagrant/ folder on vm and in same directory as Vagrantfile on host.

After creating environment and optional shell script (e.g. bootstrap.sh), open the Vagrantfile and modify the following:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "<environment>"
  config.vm.provision :shell, path: "bootstrap.sh"
end

If the guest machine is already running from a previous step, run:

$ vagrant reload --provision

Update apt-get

$ sudo apt-get update

VirtualBox

start vm

$ VBoxHeadless --startvm "vm-name" &
# or
$ VBoxManage startvm "vm-name" --type headless

create vm

$ VBoxManage createvm --name "vm-name"

power off vm

$ VBoxManage controlvm "vm-name" poweroff

verify extension pack is installed in order to use VirtualBox headless

$ VBoxManage list extpacks