Rancher Deployment Strategy

There are two recommended deployment strategies for a Rancher instance that manages downstream Kubernetes clusters. Each one has its own pros and cons. Read more about which one would fit best for your use case.

Hub & Spoke Strategy

In this deployment scenario, there is a single Rancher instance managing Kubernetes clusters across the globe. The Rancher instance would be run on a high-availability Kubernetes cluster, and there would be impact due to latencies.

Pros

• Single control plane interface to view/see all regions and environments.
• Kubernetes does not require Rancher to operate and can tolerate losing connectivity to the Rancher instance.

Cons

• Subject to network latencies.
• If Rancher goes down, global provisioning of new services is unavailable until it is restored. However, each Kubernetes cluster can continue to be managed individually.

Regional Strategy

In the regional deployment model a Rancher instance is deployed in close proximity to the downstream Kubernetes clusters.

Pros

• Rancher functionality in regions stay operational if a Rancher instance in another region goes down.
• Network latency between Rancher and downstream clusters is greatly reduced, improving the performance of functionality in Rancher.
• Upgrades of Rancher can be done independently per region.

Cons

• Overhead of managing multiple Rancher installations.
• Visibility into Kubernetes clusters in different regions requires multiple interfaces/panes of glass.
• Deploying multi-cluster apps in Rancher requires repeating the process for each Rancher server.