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Deploy Rancher Kubernetes Engine

Use Rancher Kubernetes Engine to build a configurable Kubernetes cluster with Docker-based components.

peterlee
peterlee
Oct 10, 2021
English繁中
Deploy Rancher Kubernetes Engine

This is a record of my 2021 RKE1 setup with Kubernetes 1.20.11. RKE1 reached end of life on July 31, 2025; for a new cluster, follow the current RKE2 documentation. The lifecycle notice is documented by Rancher.

Why I used RKE1 for this cluster

RKE1 fit that environment because it let me manage cluster components through one configuration. Upgrades were harder to coordinate across the Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS and CentOS 7 servers; RKE1 reduced some of those differences by running Kubernetes services in Docker.

RKE1 also configured each node over SSH, so I did not have to join workers manually from the control-plane node.

This is an example RKE cluster.yml configuration.

nodes:
    - address: 192.168.1.109
      user: node
      role:
        - controlplane
        - etcd
        - worker
    - address: 192.168.1.105
      user: node
      role:
        - worker
      ssh_key_path: /home/node/.ssh/udoo
      labels:
        app: ingress

cluster_name: mycluster
ignore_docker_version: false
ssh_key_path: /home/node/.ssh/rke_rsa
ssh_cert_path: /home/node/.ssh/rke_rsa.pub
kubernetes_version: "v1.20.11-rancher1-2"

ingress:
  provider: nginx
  network_mode: hostPort
  http_port: 8888
  https_port: 9999
  node_selector:
    app: ingress

private_registries:
     - url: registry.DOMAIN_NAME
       user: USER_NAME
       password: USER_PASSWORD 
       is_default: false
  1. 192.168.1.109: control plane, etcd, and worker.
  2. 192.168.1.105: worker and ingress.

Ingress runs on 192.168.1.105.

Download the RKE binary for this environment

RKE Binary

Installation note

  1. Build the cluster.

Make sure cluster.yml is in the same directory as the RKE binary. RKE runs on most Linux distributions with Docker installed.

Reference: general-linux-requirements

$ ./rke up
INFO[0000] Building Kubernetes cluster
...
INFO[0101] Finished building Kubernetes cluster successfully
  1. After RKE initializes the cluster, use the generated kubeconfig to connect with kubectl.
$ cp kube_config_cluster.yml ~/.kube/config

By default, kubectl reads ~/.kube/config. Use --kubeconfig to specify a different path. For example:

kubectl --kubeconfig /custom/path/kube.config get pods
  1. Check node status.
➜  $ kubectl get node
NAME            STATUS   ROLES                      AGE   VERSION
192.168.1.105   Ready    worker                     36d   v1.20.11
192.168.1.109   Ready    controlplane,etcd,worker   36d   v1.20.11
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