The following steps will quickly deploy a Rancher server on Azure in a single-node RKE Kubernetes cluster, with a single-node downstream Kubernetes cluster attached.

Prerequisites

Note 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

1. Clone Rancher Quickstart to a folder using git clone https://github.com/rancher/quickstart.

2. Go into the Azure folder containing the terraform files by executing cd quickstart/azure.

3. Rename the terraform.tfvars.example file to terraform.tfvars.

4. Edit terraform.tfvars and customize the following variables:

   • azure_subscription_id - Microsoft Azure Subscription ID
   • azure_client_id - Microsoft Azure Client ID
   • azure_client_secret - Microsoft Azure Client Secret
   • azure_tenant_id - Microsoft Azure Tenant ID
   • rancher_server_admin_password - Admin password for created Rancher server

5. 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
   • prefix - Prefix for all created resources
   • instance_type - Compute instance size used, minimum is Standard_DS2_v2 but Standard_DS2_v3 or Standard_DS3_v2 could be used if within budget

6. Run terraform init.

7. 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.xip.io
   workload_node_ip = yy.yy.yy.yy

8. Paste the rancher_server_url from the output above into the browser. Log in when prompted (default username is admin, use the password set in rancher_server_admin_password).

9. ssh to the Rancher Server using the id_rsa key generated in quickstart/azure.

Result

Two Kubernetes clusters are deployed into your Azure account, one running Rancher Server and the other ready for experimentation deployments.

What’s Next?

Use Rancher to create a deployment. For more information, see Creating Deployments.

Destroying the Environment

1. From the quickstart/azure folder, execute terraform destroy --auto-approve.

2. Wait for confirmation that all resources have been destroyed.