Install Calico on a Rancher Kubernetes Engine cluster

Big picture

Install Calico as the required CNI for networking and/or network policy on Rancher-deployed clusters.

Calico supports the Calico CNI with Calico network policy:

The geeky details of what you get:

Policy	IPAM	CNI	Overlay	Routing	Datastore

Required

A compatible Rancher Kubernetes Engine cluster with version 1.3
- Configure your cluster with a Cluster Config File and specify no network plugin by setting plugin: none under network in your configuration file.
RKE cluster meets the Calico requirements
A kubectl environment with access to your cluster
- Use Rancher kubectl Shell for access
- Ensure you have the Kubeconfig file that was generated when you created the cluster.
If using a Kubeconfig file locally, install and set up the Kubectl CLI tool.

Install the Tigera Calico operator and custom resource definitions.
```
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.25.0/manifests/tigera-operator.yaml
```
note

Due to the large size of the CRD bundle, kubectl apply might exceed request limits. Instead, use kubectl create or kubectl replace.
Install Calico by creating the necessary custom resource. For more information on configuration options available in this manifest, see the installation reference.
```
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.25.0/manifests/custom-resources.yaml
```
note

Before creating this manifest, read its contents and make sure its settings are correct for your environment. For example, you may need to change the default IP pool CIDR to match your pod network CIDR. Rancher uses 10.42.0.0/16 by default.

note

If you are installing Calico on Windows nodes in this cluster, please see the Calico for Windows for RKE installation instructions.
Confirm that all of the pods are running with the following command.
```
watch kubectl get pods -n calico-system
```
Wait until each pod has the STATUS of Running.

Congratulations! You now have an RKE cluster running Calico

Required

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