This workflow is recommended for developers who want an easy, end-to-end workflow that automatically creates a single or multiple-node ONOS controller and a Mininet-modeled control and data network, all in a single VM, on a single development machine (typically a laptop with a few gigabytes of memory and an Ubuntu VM running in VirtualBox.) It can also run on a hardware server (or laptop) running Ubuntu natively.
Mininet is a lightweight container orchestration system that is specialized for network emulation. With Mininet and onos.py, you can easily start up an ONOS cluster, and a modeled data network for any topology you might like, in a single VM or server. This is usually the most convenient way to create an ONOS development environment on your laptop, and you can be up and running in a matter of minutes (or seconds if you have already built ONOS and have already installed Mininet!)