What is a Vagrant alternative?

A popular Vagrant alternative is Docker. Docker enables developers to create and manage lightweight containerized environments that fire up quicker and are more economical on resources compared to traditional virtual machines. Contrary to Vagrant, which typically relies on full VM providers like VirtualBox, Docker takes advantage of the existence of containers for isolating applications and, therefore, is your best bet for developing and deploying microservices and scalable applications.
Other options include **Minikube**, for focused local development on Kubernetes; **Multipass**, for easy VM management; and **Ansible**, to handle provisioning and configuration management. The choice will depend on the particular needs at each development and deployment stage, considering the peculiar advantages of each of these tools.