Introduction to Kubernetes

We suppose you have known how kubernetes work and a kubernetes environment in use.

Setup K8s Cluster with Rancher

Claim: I've built this at May 26 2021 in Beijing, China(UTC+8), China. Please refer to fitted documentations if any step changed.

Install RancherD to deploy Rancher

For most of the cases, just run the rancherd installer.

curl -sfL https://get.rancher.io | sh -

Alternatively, you can download the latest rancherd package from github releases assets.

# fill the proxy url if you use one
export https_proxy=
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/rancher/rancher/releases/latest \
  |jq '.assets[] |
    select(.browser_download_url|contains("rancherd-amd64.tar.gz")) |
    .browser_download_url' -r \
  |wget -ci -

And install it.

tar xzf rancherd-amd64.tar.gz -C /usr/local

Then start the rancherd service.

systemctl enable rancherd-server
systemctl start rancherd-server

Keep tracking with the service.

journalctl -fu rancherd-server

End with log successfully:

"Event occurred" object="cn120" kind="Node" apiVersion="v1" \ 
type="Normal" reason="Synced" message="Node synced successfully"

Setup kubeconfig and kubectl

Once the Kubernetes cluster is up, set up RancherD’s kubeconfig file and kubectl:

export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/rke2/rke2.yaml
export PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/rancher/rke2/bin

Check rancher status with kubectl:

kubectl get daemonset rancher -n cattle-system
kubectl get pod -n cattle-system

Result:

NAME      DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   NODE SELECTOR                         AGE
rancher   1         1         1       1            1           node-role.kubernetes.io/master=true   36m
NAME                               READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
helm-operation-5c2wd               0/2     Completed   0          34m
helm-operation-bdxlx               0/2     Completed   0          33m
helm-operation-cgcvr               0/2     Completed   0          34m
helm-operation-cj4g4               0/2     Completed   0          33m
helm-operation-hq282               0/2     Completed   0          34m
helm-operation-lp5nn               0/2     Completed   0          33m
rancher-kf592                      1/1     Running     0          36m
rancher-webhook-65f558c486-vrjz9   1/1     Running     0          33m

Set Rancher Password

rancherd reset-admin

You would see like this:

INFO[0000] Server URL: https://*.*.*.*:8443      
INFO[0000] Default admin and password created. Username: admin, Password: ****

Point to server url, you can see the login page.

Type right username and password, then enjoy rancher powered cluster dashboard.

HA Settings

Check the token in /var/lib/rancher/rke2/server/node-token.

Install rancherd-server in other nodes like first node:

tar xzf rancherd-amd64.tar.gz -C /usr/local
systemctl enable rancherd-server

Prepare config dir:

mkdir -p /etc/rancher/rke2

Change the config file in /etc/rancher/rke2/config.yaml.

server: https://192.168.60.120:9345
token: <the token in /var/lib/rancher/rke2/server/node-token>

Start rancherd

systemctl start rancherd-server
journalctl -fu rancherd-server

Other nodes just copy the config.yaml and start rancherd, and those will be joined to cluster automatically.

Type kubectl get daemonset rancher -n cattle-system：

NAME      DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   NODE SELECTOR                         AGE
rancher   3         3         3       3            3           node-role.kubernetes.io/master=true   129m

Three nodes rancher+k8s cluster are avalibale now.