Rancher Deep Dive: Manage enterprise Kubernetes seamlessly with Rancher

by Matthew Mattox

Length: 408 pages
Edition: 1
Language: English
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Publication Date: 2022-07-15
ISBN-10: 180324609X
ISBN-13: 9781803246093
Sales Rank: #188119 (See Top 100 Books)

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Effectively build, manage, and secure your Kubernetes workloads to implement CI/CD

Key Features

Gain a complete understanding of how Rancher works
Discover how to design and deploy Kubernetes clusters using Rancher
Understand how to extend Kubernetes and Rancher’s capabilities to take your apps to the next level

Book Description

Knowing how to use Rancher enables you to manage multiple clusters and applications without being locked into a vendor’s platform. This book will guide you through Rancher’s capabilities while deepening your understanding of Kubernetes and helping you to take your applications to a new level.

The book begins by introducing you to Rancher and Kubernetes, helping you to learn and implement best practices. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll understand the strengths and limitations of Rancher and Kubernetes and discover all the different ways to deploy Rancher. You’ll also find out how to design and deploy Kubernetes clusters to match your requirements. The concluding chapters will show you how to set up a continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline for deploying applications into a Rancher cluster, along with covering supporting services such as image registries and Helm charts.

By the end of this Kubernetes book, you’ll be able to confidently deploy your mission-critical production workloads on Rancher-managed Kubernetes clusters.

What you will learn

Deploy Rancher in a production-ready configuration
Architect an application cluster to support mission-critical workloads
Build the type of Kubernetes cluster that makes sense for your environment
Discover the tools and services needed to make a new, ready-to-deploy cluster
Prepare your applications to be deployed into Rancher for Kubernetes
Expand your Kubernetes cluster by providing additional services such as Longhorn, OPA, and monitoring

Who this book is for

This book is for DevOps engineers looking to deploy Kubernetes in a fast and easy way. A basic understanding of Linux administration and containerization is needed to get the most out of this book.

Rancher Deep Dive
Contributors
About the author
About the reviewer
About SUSE
Preface
    Who this book is for
    What this book covers
    To get the most out of this book
    Download the color images
    Download the example code files
    Conventions used
    Get in touch
    Share Your Thoughts
Part 1 – Rancher Background and Architecture and Design
Chapter 1: Introduction to Rancher and Kubernetes
    The history of Rancher Labs as a company
    Rancher's earlier products
    What is Rancher's core philosophy?
    Where did Kubernetes come from?
    What problem is Kubernetes trying to solve?
    Comparing Kubernetes with Docker Swarm and OpenShift
        Kubernetes versus Docker Swarm
        Kubernetes versus OpenShift
    Summary
Chapter 2: Rancher and Kubernetes High-Level Architecture
    What is the Rancher server?
    What are RKE and RKE2?
        So, what is RKE? 
        What is RKE2? 
    What is K3s (five less than K8s)?
    What is RancherD?
    What controllers run inside the Rancher server pods?
    What do the Cattle agents do?
    How does Rancher provision nodes and clusters?
    What are kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler, etcd, and kubelet?
    How do the current state and the desired state work?
    Summary
Part 2 – Installing Rancher
Chapter 3: Creating a Single Node Rancher
    What is a single-node Rancher installation?
    Requirements and limitations
    Rules for architecting a solution
    Installation steps
        Installing Docker
        Prepping the SSL certificates
        Starting the Rancher server
    Migration to an HA setup
        Backing up the current Rancher server
        Starting cutover to new cluster
        Cleaning up/rolling back
    Summary
Chapter 4: Creating an RKE and RKE2 Cluster
    What is an RKE cluster?
        Where did RKE come from? 
        How does RKE work? 
    What is an RKE2 cluster?
    What is RancherD?
    Requirements and limitations
        Basic requirements
        Design limitations and considerations
    Rules for architecting a solution
        RKE clusters
        RKE2 clusters
    Install steps (RKE)
    Install steps (RKE2)
    Configuring an external load balancer (HAProxy)
        TCP mode
        HTTP/HTTPS mode
    Configuring MetalLB
        Installation
        Configuration
    Summary
Chapter 5: Deploying Rancher on a Hosted Kubernetes Cluster
    Understanding hosted Kubernetes clusters
    Requirements and limitations
        Amazon EKS
        Google's GKE
        Azure's AKS
    Rules for architecting a solution
        Amazon EKS
        Google's GKE
        Azure's AKS
    Creating a hosted Kubernetes cluster
        Amazon EKS
        Google's GKE
        Azure's AKS
    Installing and upgrading Rancher
        Installing Rancher
        Upgrading Rancher
    Rancher-Backup-Operator
        Installation
        Creating a backup
    Summary
Part 3 – Deploying a Kubernetes Cluster 
Chapter 6: Creating an RKE Cluster Using Rancher
    What is a Rancher-managed cluster?
        Where do Rancher-managed clusters come from?
        How does Rancher manage nodes? 
        How does Rancher manage a cluster?  
    Requirements and limitations
        Rancher-created managed nodes
        Existing nodes
    Rules for architecting a solution
        AWS
        GCP
    Preparing for nodes to join Rancher
    Prepping the infrastructure provider
    The steps for creating an RKE cluster using Rancher
    Deploying a cluster using node pools
    Ongoing maintenance tasks
    Summary
Chapter 7: Deploying a Hosted Cluster with Rancher
    How can Rancher manage a hosted cluster?
    Requirements and limitations
        Basic requirements
        Design limitations and considerations
    Rules for architecting a solution
        Amazon EKS
        GKE
        Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
    Prepping the cloud provider
        Amazon EKS
        GKE
        AKS
    Installation steps
        Amazon EKS
        GKE
        AKS
    Ongoing maintenance tasks
    Summary
Chapter 8: Importing an Externally Managed Cluster into Rancher
    What is an imported cluster?
        What is this local cluster in my new Rancher instance? 
        Why is the local cluster an imported cluster? 
        Why are some imported clusters special? 
        What kinds of clusters can be imported? 
        Why would I import an RKE cluster instead of creating one in Rancher? 
        What can Rancher do with an imported cluster? 
    Requirements and limitations
        Basic requirements
        Design limitations and considerations
    Rules for architecting a solution
        Externally managed RKE 
        Kubernetes The Hard Way
        k3s cluster
        RKE2 cluster
    How can Rancher access a cluster?
    Summary
Part 4 – Getting Your Cluster Production-Ready 
Chapter 9: Cluster Configuration Backup and Recovery
    What is an etcd backup?
    Why do I need to back up my etcd?
    How does an etcd backup work?
        RKE clusters
        RKE2/k3s clusters
    How does an etcd restore work?
        RKE clusters 
        RKE2/k3s clusters
    When do you need an etcd restore?
    What does an etcd backup not protect?
    How do you configure etcd backups?
        RKE clusters
        RKE2/k3s clusters 
    How do you take an etcd backup?
        RKE clusters
        RKE2/k3s clusters
    How do you restore from an etcd backup?
        RKE clusters
        RKE2/k3s clusters
    Setting up a lab environment to test common failure scenarios
    Summary
Chapter 10: Monitoring and Logging
    What is Prometheus and Grafana?
    Deploying Rancher's monitoring stack 
    Adding custom application metrics to Prometheus
    Creating alert rules in Prometheus
    Creating a Grafana dashboard
    What is the Banzai Cloud Logging operator?
    What is Fluent Bit and Fluentd?
    Deploying Rancher logging
    Filtering application logs
    Writing logs to multiple log servers
    Summary
Chapter 11: Bringing Storage to Kubernetes Using Longhorn 
    What is persistent storage and why do we need it in Kubernetes?
    What is Longhorn?
    How does Longhorn work?
    Pros and cons of Longhorn
    Rules for architecting a Longhorn solution
        Smallest
        Medium with shared nodes
        Large with dedicated nodes
    Installing Longhorn
    How do Longhorn upgrades work?
    Critical maintenance tasks for keeping Longhorn at 100%
    Troubleshooting common Longhorn issues
    Summary
Chapter 12: Security and Compliance Using OPA Gatekeeper
    Why should I care about security in Kubernetes?
    How do I enforce standards and security policies in Kubernetes?
    What is OPA Gatekeeper?
    How to install OPA Gatekeeper from the marketplace
    Best practices and standard policies
    How do I scan my cluster for security issues?
    How do I lock down my cluster?
    Deploying Rancher CIS scan
    Additional security tools for protecting a cluster
    Summary
Chapter 13: Scaling in Kubernetes
    What is an HPA?
        When should you use an HPA?
        When should you not use an HPA?
        Example – simple web server with CPU utilization
    What is a VPA?
        How does a VPA work?
        Why do you need a VPA?
        How to write VPA manifests
    What is Kubernetes Node Autoscaler?
        When should you use a Kubernetes Node Autoscaler?
        When should you not use a Kubernetes Node Autoscaler?
        How to set up autoscaling with Rancher-managed clusters
        How to set up autoscaling with hosted clusters
    Summary
Chapter 14: Load Balancer Configuration and SSL Certificates
    Why do we need an external load balancer to support a Kubernetes cluster?
    Rules for architecting a solution
        Round-robin DNS 
        Passive external load balancer
        Active external load balancer
        Integrated load balancer 
    Configuring F5 in TCP and HTTP mode
        TCP mode
        HTTP mode
    Configuring HAProxy to work with Kubernetes
        Installing HAProxy on Ubuntu/Debian systems
        Red Hat/CentOS 
        TCP mode
        HTTP mode 
    Installing and configuring MetalLB
    What is ingress in Kubernetes?
    How to add an SSL certificate to an ingress
    Summary
Chapter 15: Rancher and Kubernetes Troubleshooting
    Recovering an RKE cluster from an etcd split-brain
        What is an etcd split-brain?
        Identifying the common error messages
    Rebuilding from an etcd backup
    How to resolve Pods not being able to be scheduled due to OPA Gatekeeper
    A runaway app stomping all over a cluster
    Can rotating kube-ca break my cluster?
    How to fix a namespace that is stuck in terminating status
        Rancher-created namespaces getting stuck
        Custom metrics causing all namespaces to be stuck
        The Longhorn system is stuck terminating
    General troubleshooting for RKE clusters
    Summary
Part 5 – Deploying Your Applications 
Chapter 16: Setting Up a CI/CD Pipeline and Image Registry
    What is a CI/CD pipeline?
    Rules for architecting a solution
        Drone
        Jenkins
        GitHub Actions
    How to deploy Drone and its runners in Kubernetes with Rancher
        Prerequisites
        Installation steps
        Connecting to Rancher
    Injecting secrets into a pipeline
    What an image repository is and the rules for architecting a solution
        Docker Hub
        Image repositories managed by third parties 
        Self-hosted repo
    How to deploy Harbor in Kubernetes
    Integrating a private registry into a Kubernetes cluster
        Collect/publish images 
        Rancher global registry
        Update RKE/RKE2
    Summary
Chapter 17: Creating and Using Helm Charts
    What is a Helm chart?
    How does Helm work?
    How do I create a Helm chart?
    Deploying a Helm chart
    Customizing a public Helm chart
    Summary
Chapter 18: Resource Management
    How to apply resource limits and quotas to a Pod
    How namespace limits/quotas are calculated
    How to use tools such as Kubecost to track usage and cost over time
    Summary
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