Rancher on Rancher Desktop

While Rancher and Rancher Desktop share the Rancher name, they do different things. Rancher Desktop is not Rancher on the Desktop. Rancher is a powerful solution to manage Kubernetes clusters. Rancher Desktop runs local Kubernetes and a container management platform. The two solutions complement each other. For example, you can install Rancher as a workload in Rancher Desktop.

This guide outlines steps to install Rancher Dashboard on Rancher Desktop using container runtime or helm (local environment):

Note: You may encounter issues if the supporting utilities (ex: helm), or your workload versions are incompatible with the Kubernetes version in your session. As a potential fix, you can switch to a compatible Kubernetes version via the Preferences > Kubernetes dialog. Supported Kubernetes platforms for Rancher are available on the support matrix page.

  • nerdctl
  • docker
  • helm
  1. nerdctl run --privileged -d --restart=always -p 8080:80 -p 8443:443 rancher/rancher
  1. docker run --privileged -d --restart=always -p 8080:80 -p 8443:443 rancher/rancher

1: Add Jetstack charts:

  1. helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io

2: Add latest Rancher charts:

  1. helm repo add rancher-latest https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/latest

3: Create cert-manager namespace:

  1. kubectl create namespace cert-manager

4: Install cert-manager services:

  1. helm install cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager --namespace cert-manager --version v1.7.1 --set installCRDs=true

5: Apply CRDs:

  1. kubectl apply --validate=false -f https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.7.1/cert-manager.crds.yaml

6: Create cattle-system namespace:

  1. kubectl create namespace cattle-system

7: Install Rancher application:

  1. helm install rancher rancher-latest/rancher --namespace cattle-system --set hostname=rancher.rd.localhost --wait --timeout=10m

The installation takes a few minutes to complete. After the installation, you can access the Rancher UI as follows:

Rancher on Rancher Desktop - 图1

  • nerdctl
  • docker

In order to access the Rancher UI, you need to get the Bootstrap Password:

1: Get Rancher UI container ID/Name:

  1. nerdctl ps

2: Get the Bootstrap Password:

  1. nerdctl logs [rancherContainerID] 2>&1 | grep "Bootstrap Password:"

3: Bootstrap Password example:

  1. [INFO] Bootstrap Password: 7fwjjw4ldcmnq8ghns22q7nhl5lrznwwt9p9vjljfjc6tqbcvhxmwq

In order to access the Rancher UI, you need to get the Bootstrap Password:

1: Get Rancher UI container ID/Name:

  1. docker ps

2: Get the Bootstrap Password:

  1. docker logs [rancherContainerID] 2>&1 | grep "Bootstrap Password:"

3: Bootstrap Password example:

  1. [INFO] Bootstrap Password: 7fwjjw4ldcmnq8ghns22q7nhl5lrznwwt9p9vjljfjc6tqbcvhxmwq

Follow the wizard instructions and click on Continue to land on the main Rancher UI page.

Rancher on Rancher Desktop - 图2

From the Rancher UI, you can manage your local cluster, node, and more. For more information, see Rancher Docs.