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EKS + RANCHER



Introduction


Rancher is an open-source software platform that enables organizations to run containers in production. With Rancher, organizations no longer have to build a container services platform from scratch using a distinct set of open source technologies. Rancher supplies the entire software stack needed to manage containers in production.


Not only Rancher allows us to manage containers but also allows us to create a production-grade Kubernetes cluster. One of the most prominent Kubernetes clusters that companies use today is EKS( Elastic Kubernetes Cluster) and in this article, we are going to learn how to deploy the EKS cluster using Rancher.


Lab Setup


  • Deploy a CentOS 7 virtual machine. We will deploy it on the oracle virtual box.

  • Login to the server and install the pre-requisite packages.

sudo yum install epel-release wget -y
sudo yum install epel-release wget -y
sudo yum install -y yum-utils -y

  • Install docker community edition.

sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo
sudo yum install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io -y
sudo systemctl start docker
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo systemctl status docker

  • Run a Rancher container on the Centos machine 

docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped -p 80:80 -p 443:443 rancher/rancher

  • Open the Rancher in your browser ( https://server_ip)




So you see, how easy it is to run Rancher for our use. Now let us proceed to install EKS cluster with Rancher,


EKS installation with Rancher


  • Once you successfully login, the Rancher console looks like below.



Next, we need to Go to our AWS account where we need to launch EKS cluster -- Go to IAM service -- Create a user with admin privileges and download its key pair.


Now follow the below steps on Rancher console.


  • Select the type of Kubernetes cluster that you want to deploy (EKS)


  • Give the name of the cluster and the AWS account credentials ( Access Key and Secret Key)



  • Select the Kubernetes version to deploy.


  • Configure the VPC related settings


  • Do the cluster node configuration



Just proceed to the next step and wait for around 15 minutes.

Bang !!! The cluster will be ready.



NOTE: Rancher also has features that allow us to see the cluster insight, sort of monitoring dashboard, and cluster node status. Please feel free to explore the Rancher features.


Hope this was helpful :-)


This is just a beginning. Stay tuned for more articles coming soon.