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balajivedagiri
balajivedagiri

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Provisioning an RKE2 (Rancher Kubernetes Engine 2) cluster on vSphere

In this article i will walk you down with steps to create RKE2 cluster on vSphere vCenter from Rancher UI.

Pre-requisites

  • Rancher nodes needs to communicate with vSphere vCenter on port 443.
  • Rancher nodes needs to communicate with RKE2 cluster nodes on port 22.

1. Installing packages in the template VM.

Create a new Ubuntu VM, perform below steps and later convert it into a template. We will let rancher use this template to create VM's.

Ensure below packages are installed in the template,
• curl
• wget
• git
• net-tools
• unzip
• apparmor-parser
• ca-certificates
• cloud-init
• cloud-guest-utils
• cloud-image-utils
• growpart
• cloud-initramfs-growroot
• open-iscsi
• openssh-server
• open-vm-tools



sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y curl wget git net-tools unzip ca-certificates cloud-init cloud-guest-utils cloud-image-utils cloud-initramfs-growroot open-iscsi openssh-server open-vm-tools net-tools apparmor


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2. Configure the datasource for cloud-init in the template VM.

  • Rancher will use cloud-init for things like setting hostname, creating a user, running a script, etc.
  • Set the datasource for cloud-init using command “dpkg-reconfigure cloud-init”.


sudo dpkg-reconfigure cloud-init


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  • And ensure “NoCloud” datasource is selected like below, I have deselected all other datasources since my requirement for rancher is only “NoCloud”.

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Verify that changes are propagated to the config file,



root@:~# cat /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/90_dpkg.cfg
# to update this file, run dpkg-reconfigure cloud-init
datasource_list: [ NoCloud ]
root@:~#


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3. Convert the VM into a template.

Run below script to scrub the VM ( similar to sysprep on Windows ).
Save below contents to a file and execute it.



#!/bin/bash
# Cleaning logs.
if [ -f /var/log/audit/audit.log ]; then
  cat /dev/null > /var/log/audit/audit.log
fi
if [ -f /var/log/wtmp ]; then
  cat /dev/null > /var/log/wtmp
fi
if [ -f /var/log/lastlog ]; then
  cat /dev/null > /var/log/lastlog
fi

# Cleaning udev rules.
if [ -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules ]; then
  rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
fi

# Cleaning the /tmp directories
rm -rf /tmp/*
rm -rf /var/tmp/*

# Cleaning the SSH host keys
rm -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*

# Cleaning the machine-id
truncate -s 0 /etc/machine-id
rm /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
ln -s /etc/machine-id /var/lib/dbus/machine-id

# Cleaning the shell history
unset HISTFILE
history -cw
echo > ~/.bash_history
rm -fr /root/.bash_history

# Truncating hostname, hosts, resolv.conf and setting hostname to localhost
truncate -s 0 /etc/{hostname,hosts,resolv.conf}
hostnamectl set-hostname localhost

# Clean cloud-init
cloud-init clean -s -l


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Now clone the VM to a template.

4. Add vSphere vCenter credentials in Rancher.

Login into Rancher => Click on Burger menu => Click on Cluster Management => Click on Cloud Credentials.

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Click Create and Click on VMware vSphere

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Enter your vSphere vCenter credentials, we will use administrator account. For granular permissions, please refer rancher documentation.

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5. Create RKE2 Cluster in vSphere

Go back to Rancher homepage, Click on Create.

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Ensure you toggle the switch to RKE2 as highlighted below and click on VMware vSphere.

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Enter the details,

Pool1, we will use to create "Control Plane Nodes". Ensure you select appropriate Data Center/Resource Pool/Data Store/Folder.

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Select the Template that you created in the initial steps, along with CPU/Memory/Networks/etc like below.

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Add another pool for worker node,

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Fill the information like we did above for control plane nodes.

For the sake simplicity, we will keep the default values for the cluster and Click Create,

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Cluster creation in progress,

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Wait for the nodes to be bootstrapped and cluster creation,

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If you see VM settings, rancher would have mounted an iso called user-data.iso

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If you login to one of the node and navigate to /mnt, it will have user-data and meta-data and used by cloud-init (if you remember, this is the reason, we selected NoCloud as data source for cloud-init)



root@vsphere-rke2-test01-pool1-4a86ea2d-tf5jq:~# cd /mnt
root@vsphere-rke2-test01-pool1-4a86ea2d-tf5jq:/mnt# ls
meta-data user-data
root@vsphere-rke2-test01-pool1-4a86ea2d-tf5jq:/mnt# cat meta-data
hostname: vsphere-rke2-test01-pool1-4a86ea2d-tf5jq
root@vsphere-rke2-test01-pool1-4a86ea2d-tf5jq:/mnt#
root@vsphere-rke2-test01-pool1-4a86ea2d-tf5jq:/mnt# cat user-data

cloud-config

groups:

  • staff hostname: vsphere-rke2-test01-pool1-4a86ea2d-tf5jq runcmd:
  • sh /usr/local/custom_script/install.sh set_hostname:
  • vsphere-rke2-test01-pool1-4a86ea2d-tf5jq users:
  • create_groups: false groups: staff lock_passwd: true name: docker no_user_group: true
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  1. Add a new worker node.

Lets add a new worker node to existing cluster.
Go to Rancher home => Click burger menu => Click on Cluster Management => Click on your cluster.

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Under pool2 dedicated to worker nodes, click on Plus icon,

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events on vcenter of node getting created,

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Worker node2 successfully added.

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