Requirements

• Ubuntu 20.04LTS
• Load Balancer
• MySQL or MariaDB
• Bare Metal or VMs

Specs

We will be utilizing 6 Virtual Machines for this build.

Kubernetes Servers: (3 Total)

Specs	Description
CPU	4 Cores
RAM	8GB
Disk Space	32GB

Kubernetes Workers: (3 Total)

Specs	Description
CPU	4 Cores
RAM	8GB
Disk Space	32GB
Additional Disk	250GB

Update Ubuntu

Run the following command to make sure your Ubuntu installation is up to date.

sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

Kubernetes Installation

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Google originally designed Kubernetes, but the Cloud Native Computing Foundation now maintains the project.

Install Kubernetes

Repleace the following variables

• {LOADBALANCER} = This is generally the IP address to your load balancer
• {USERNAME} = MySQL or MariaDB Username
• {PASSWORD} = MySQL or MariaDB Password
• {IP} = IP or hostname of your database server
• {PORT} = MySQL and MariaDB use 3306
• {DATABASE} = Database name

This command will spin up a kubernetes server that does not allow deployments. We will utilize worker nodes for that.

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_VERSION=v1.20.15+k3s1 sh -s - server \
  --node-taint CriticalAddonsOnly=true:NoExecute \
  --tls-san {LOADBALANCER} \
  --disable servicelb \
  --disable traefik \
  --datastore-endpoint='mysql://{USERNAME}:{PASSWORD}@tcp({IP}:{PORT})/{DATABASE}'

Token

This is needed to add additional servers and workers. Replace {TOKEN} in the following commands with the output of the following:

cat /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/token

Add Additional Servers

Run the following command to add additional servers to your cluster

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_VERSION=v1.20.15+k3s1 sh -s - server \
  --node-taint CriticalAddonsOnly=true:NoExecute \
  --tls-san {LOADBALANCER} \
  --disable servicelb \
  --disable traefik \
  --token={TOKEN} \
  --datastore-endpoint='mysql://{USERNAME}:{PASSWORD}@tcp({IP}:{PORT}/{DATABASE}'

Add Worker Nodes

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_VERSION=v1.20.15+k3s1 K3S_URL=https://{LOADBALANCER}:6443 K3S_TOKEN={TOKEN} sh -s -

Rancher Installation

Rancher, the open-source multi-cluster orchestration platform, lets operations teams deploy, manage and secure enterprise Kubernetes.

Setup kubectl

The Kubernetes command-line tool, kubectl, allows you to run commands against Kubernetes clusters. https://kubernetes.io/

Kubectl is meant to run on your personal machines to manage kubernetes clusters. You can run this using WSL + Ubuntu or use the link above to configure kubectl for your environment.

curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

Configure kubectl

Copy the contents of the following command. You will need for kubectl config.

sudo cat /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml

Make directory to store our kubectl config.

sudo mkdir ~/.kube

Create our config file and past the contents from above.

sudo nano ~./kube/config

To save and exit nano use the following commands

ctrl+o
ctrl+x

Set read only permissions

sudo chmod 400 ~/.kube/config

Install HELM

Helm helps you manage Kubernetes applications — Helm Charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install/

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash
helm repo add rancher-latest https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/stable
helm repo update
kubectl create namespace cattle-system

Install Cert-Manager

Cloud native certificate management ... cert-manager is a powerful and extensible X.509 certificate controller for Kubernetes and OpenShift workloads https://cert-manager.io/

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.8.2/cert-manager.yaml

Install Rancher

Replease {HOSTNAME} with the URL you intend to use to access launcher. Depending on your setup you may need to add a line to your host file that points this domain to your load balancer.

helm install rancher rancher-latest/rancher \
  --namespace cattle-system \
  --set hostname={HOSTNAME}

Rollout Status

kubectl -n cattle-system rollout status deploy/rancher

Rancher temporary password

kubectl get secret --namespace cattle-system bootstrap-secret -o go-template='{{.data.bootstrapPassword|base64decode}}{{ "\n" }}'