Rancher Cluster Templates

Let's see how to automate Rancher Cluster Templates to ease cluster management with Rancher.

Infrastructure providers

IMPORTANT

Node driver must be enabled in Rancher prior to Helm chart installation.

Provider	Template	Node Driver
Amazon Web Services (AWS)	amazonec2config	Amazon EC2
Azure	azureconfig	Azure
CloudScale	cloudscaleconfig	Cloudscale
Digitial Ocean	digitaloceanconfig	DigitalOcean
Exoscale	digitaloceanconfig	Exoscale
Equinix Metal (prev. Packet)	packetconfig	Equinix Metal
Harvester	harvesterconfig	Harvester
Linode	linodeconfig	Linode
Nutanix	nutanixconfig	Nutanix
OpenStack	openstackconfig	OpenStack
Outscale	outscaleconfig	Outscale
VMware vSphere	vmwarevsphereconfig	vSphere

Repository

Make sure to have the devpro Helm repository:

helm repo add devpro https://devpro.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

Configuration

Create the values.yaml file to override default parameters.

Azure

cp examples/values_azure.yaml values_mine.yaml
resourcekey=$(openssl rand -hex 6)
sed -i "s/CLUSTER_NAME/az-rke2-$resourcekey/g" values_mine.yaml
sed -i "s/AZURE_PREFIX/$USER-$resourcekey/g" values_mine.yaml
sed -i "s/CLOUD_CREDENTIAL_SECRET/<secret_name>/g" values_mine.yaml

Outscale

cp examples/values_outscale.yaml values_mine.yaml
resourcekey=$(openssl rand -hex 6)
sed -i "s/CLUSTER_NAME/az-rke2-$resourcekey/g" values_mine.yaml
sed -i "s/CLOUD_CREDENTIAL_SECRET/<secret_name>/g" values_mine.yaml

Deployment

IMPORTANT

Make sure you are connected to the Kubernetes cluster hosting Rancher (called local by default in Rancher).

Install the application:

helm upgrade --install mycluster devpro/rancher-cluster-templates -f values.yaml --namespace fleet-default

Troubleshooting

Start by looking at the machine-provision job (in fleet-default namespace).

If there are remaining Kubernetes resources even after helm uninstall, force delete the machine.

Automation (GitOps)

Fleet example for creating RKE2 cluster in Azure

fleet.yaml

helm:
  repo: https://devpro.github.io/helm-charts
  chart: rancher-cluster-templates
  version: 0.1.1
  releaseName: rke2-azure-demo
  values:
    cluster:
      name: "azurevm-rke2-01"
    cloudprovider: azure
    cloudCredentialSecretName: cattle-global-data:cc-xxxx
    kubernetesVersion: "v1.24.14+rke2r1"
    nodepools:
      - etcd: true
        controlplane: true
        worker: true
        quantity: 1
        name: nodepool-1
        region: westeurope
        machineImage: "Canonical:0001-com-ubuntu-server-focal:20_04-lts-gen2:20.04.202307240"
        instanceType: Standard_DS2_v2
        storageType: Standard_LRS
        sshUser: azureuser
        availabilitySet: "avs-someprefix-rke2-01"
        azureEnvironment: AzurePublicCloud
        managedDisks: true
        networkSecurityGroup: "nsg-someprefix-rke2-01"
        resourceGroup: "rg-someprefix-rke2-01"
        subnet: rke2
        subnetPrefix: "192.168.0.0/16"
        virtualNetwork: "vnet-someprefix-rke2-01"

GitRepo

apiVersion: fleet.cattle.io/v1alpha1
kind: GitRepo
metadata:
  name: cluster-templates
  namespace: fleet-local
spec:
  branch: release/demo
  clientSecretName: auth-xxxx
  insecureSkipTLSVerify: false
  paths:
    - fleet/rke2-azure-demo
  repo: https://github.com/my-account/my-kubernetes-definitions.git
  targets:
    - clusterSelector:
        matchExpressions:
          - key: provider.cattle.io
            operator: NotIn
            values:
              - harvester

Clean-up

Uninstall the application and delete the namespace:

helm uninstall mycluster -n fleet-default