Rancher

Rancher, the open-source multi-cluster orchestration platform, lets operations teams deploy, manage and secure enterprise Kubernetes.

Project Homepage: Rancher Homepage Documentation: Rancher Docs

Install on Kubernetes with Helm #

Needs cert-manager first (Cert-Manager), and a hostname that resolves to the cluster (Helm Cheat-Sheet, K3S).

bash
helm repo add rancher-stable https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/stable
helm repo update
helm install cert-manager oci://quay.io/jetstack/charts/cert-manager -n cert-manager --create-namespace --set crds.enabled=true
helm install rancher rancher-stable/rancher -n cattle-system --create-namespace \
  --set hostname=rancher.example.com \
  --set bootstrapPassword=<PASSWORD> \
  --set replicas=3
kubectl -n cattle-system rollout status deploy/rancher

Rancher must be installed on a Rancher-supported Kubernetes version. Check the support matrix before picking your K3s/RKE2 version.

Quick Test Install (Docker) #

bash
docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped --privileged -p 80:80 -p 443:443 rancher/rancher:latest
docker logs <CONTAINER> 2>&1 | grep "Bootstrap Password:"

For testing only.

Reset the Admin Password #

bash
kubectl -n cattle-system exec $(kubectl -n cattle-system get pods -l app=rancher --no-headers | head -1 | awk '{print $1}') -c rancher -- reset-password

Remove Installation #

kubectl delete validatingwebhookconfiguration rancher.cattle.io
kubectl delete mutatingwebhookconfiguration rancher.cattle.io

Then uninstall the chart and clean up leftover cattle-* namespaces with the official rancher-cleanup job:

bash

helm uninstall rancher -n cattle-system

Useful kubectl #

COMMAND	DESCRIPTION
`kubectl -n cattle-system get pods`	Rancher pods
`kubectl -n cattle-system logs -l app=rancher -f`	Rancher logs
`kubectl get settings.management.cattle.io server-version`	Installed Rancher version