Rancher Azure Quick Start Guide
The following steps will quickly deploy a Rancher server on Azure in a single-node K3s Kubernetes cluster, with a single-node downstream Kubernetes cluster attached.
caution
The intent of these guides is to quickly launch a sandbox that you can use to evaluate Rancher. These guides are not intended for production environments. For comprehensive setup instructions, see Installation.
Prerequisites
caution
Deploying to Microsoft Azure will incur charges.
- Microsoft Azure Account: A Microsoft Azure Account is required to create resources for deploying Rancher and Kubernetes.
- Microsoft Azure Subscription: Use this link to follow a tutorial to create a Microsoft Azure subscription if you don’t have one yet.
- Micsoroft Azure Tenant: Use this link and follow instructions to create a Microsoft Azure tenant.
- Microsoft Azure Client ID/Secret: Use this link and follow instructions to create a Microsoft Azure client and secret.
- Terraform: Used to provision the server and cluster in Microsoft Azure.
Getting Started
Clone Rancher Quickstart to a folder using
git clone https://github.com/rancher/quickstart
.Go into the Azure folder containing the Terraform files by executing
cd quickstart/rancher/azure
.Rename the
terraform.tfvars.example
file toterraform.tfvars
.Edit
terraform.tfvars
and customize the following variables:azure_subscription_id
- Microsoft Azure Subscription IDazure_client_id
- Microsoft Azure Client IDazure_client_secret
- Microsoft Azure Client Secretazure_tenant_id
- Microsoft Azure Tenant IDrancher_server_admin_password
- Admin password for created Rancher server. See Setting up the Bootstrap Password for password requirements.
Optional: Modify optional variables within
terraform.tfvars
. See the Quickstart Readme and the Azure Quickstart Readme for more information. Suggestions include:azure_location
- Microsoft Azure region, choose the closest instead of the default (East US
)prefix
- Prefix for all created resourcesinstance_type
- Compute instance size used, minimum isStandard_DS2_v2
butStandard_DS2_v3
orStandard_DS3_v2
could be used if within budgetadd_windows_node
- If true, an additional Windows worker node is added to the workload clusterwindows_admin_password
- The admin password of the windows worker node
Run
terraform init
.To initiate the creation of the environment, run
terraform apply --auto-approve
. Then wait for output similar to the following:Apply complete! Resources: 16 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.
Outputs:
rancher_node_ip = xx.xx.xx.xx
rancher_server_url = https://rancher.xx.xx.xx.xx.sslip.io
workload_node_ip = yy.yy.yy.yy
Paste the
rancher_server_url
from the output above into the browser. Log in when prompted (default username isadmin
, use the password set inrancher_server_admin_password
).ssh to the Rancher Server using the
id_rsa
key generated inquickstart/rancher/azure
.
Result
Two Kubernetes clusters are deployed into your Azure account, one running Rancher Server and the other ready for experimentation deployments. Please note that while this setup is a great way to explore Rancher functionality, a production setup should follow our high availability setup guidelines. SSH keys for the VMs are auto-generated and stored in the module directory.
What’s Next?
Use Rancher to create a deployment. For more information, see Creating Deployments.
Destroying the Environment
From the
quickstart/rancher/azure
folder, executeterraform destroy --auto-approve
.Wait for confirmation that all resources have been destroyed.