# Get started with Docker Machine and a local VM Let's take a look at using `docker-machine` for creating, using, and managing a Docker host inside of [VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org/). First, ensure that [VirtualBox 4.3.28](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) is correctly installed on your system. If you run the `docker-machine ls` command to show all available machines, you will see that none have been created so far. ``` $ docker-machine ls NAME ACTIVE DRIVER STATE URL ``` To create one, we run the `docker-machine create` command, passing the string `virtualbox` to the `--driver` flag. The final argument we pass is the name of the machine - in this case, we will name our machine "dev". This command will download a lightweight Linux distribution ([boot2docker](https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker)) with the Docker daemon installed, and will create and start a VirtualBox VM with Docker running. ``` $ docker-machine create --driver virtualbox dev Creating CA: /home/username/.docker/machine/certs/ca.pem Creating client certificate: /home/username/.docker/machine/certs/cert.pem Image cache does not exist, creating it at /home/username/.docker/machine/cache... No default boot2docker iso found locally, downloading the latest release... Downloading https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/releases/download/v1.6.2/boot2docker.iso to /home/username/.docker/machine/cache/boot2docker.iso... Creating VirtualBox VM... Creating SSH key... Starting VirtualBox VM... Starting VM... To see how to connect Docker to this machine, run: docker-machine env dev ``` You can see the machine you have created by running the `docker-machine ls` command again: ``` $ docker-machine ls NAME ACTIVE DRIVER STATE URL SWARM dev virtualbox Running tcp://192.168.99.100:2376 ``` Next, as noted in the output of the `docker-machine create` command, we have to tell Docker to talk to that machine. You can do this with the `docker-machine env` command. For example, ``` $ eval "$(docker-machine env dev)" $ docker ps ``` > **Note**: If you are using `fish`, or a Windows shell such as > Powershell/`cmd.exe` the above method will not work as described. Instead, > see [the `env` command's documentation](https://docs.docker.com/machine/#env) > to learn how to set the environment variables for your shell. This will set environment variables that the Docker client will read which specify the TLS settings. Note that you will need to do that every time you open a new tab or restart your machine. To see what will be set, run `docker-machine env dev`. ``` $ docker-machine env dev export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY="1" export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://172.16.62.130:2376" export DOCKER_CERT_PATH="/Users//.docker/machine/machines/dev" export DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME="dev" # Run this command to configure your shell: # eval "$(docker-machine env dev)" ``` You can now run Docker commands on this host: ``` $ docker run busybox echo hello world Unable to find image 'busybox' locally Pulling repository busybox e72ac664f4f0: Download complete 511136ea3c5a: Download complete df7546f9f060: Download complete e433a6c5b276: Download complete hello world ``` Any exposed ports are available on the Docker host’s IP address, which you can get using the `docker-machine ip` command: ``` $ docker-machine ip dev 192.168.99.100 ``` For instance, you can try running a webserver ([nginx](https://www.nginx.com/) in a container with the following command: ``` $ docker run -d -p 8000:80 nginx ``` When the image is finished pulling, you can hit the server at port 8000 on the IP address given to you by `docker-machine ip`. For instance: ``` $ curl $(docker-machine ip dev):8000 Welcome to nginx!

Welcome to nginx!

If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and working. Further configuration is required.

For online documentation and support please refer to nginx.org.
Commercial support is available at nginx.com.

Thank you for using nginx.

``` You can create and manage as many local VMs running Docker as you please- just run `docker-machine create` again. All created machines will appear in the output of `docker-machine ls`. If you are finished using a host for the time being, you can stop it with `docker-machine stop` and later start it again with `docker-machine start`. Make sure to specify the machine name as an argument: ``` $ docker-machine stop dev $ docker-machine start dev ```