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Version: 2.4.15

Rancher GCP Quick Start Guide

The following steps will quickly deploy a Rancher server on GCP in a single-node RKE Kubernetes cluster, with a single-node downstream Kubernetes cluster attached.

Prerequisites#

>Note >Deploying to Google GCP will incur charges.

  • Google GCP Account: A Google GCP Account is required to create resources for deploying Rancher and Kubernetes.
  • Google GCP Project: Use this link to follow a tutorial to create a GCP Project if you don't have one yet.
  • Google GCP Service Account: Use this link and follow instructions to create a GCP service account and token file.
  • Terraform: Used to provision the server and cluster in Google GCP.

Getting Started#

  1. Clone Rancher Quickstart to a folder using git clone https://github.com/rancher/quickstart.

  2. Go into the GCP folder containing the terraform files by executing cd quickstart/gcp.

  3. Rename the terraform.tfvars.example file to terraform.tfvars.

  4. Edit terraform.tfvars and customize the following variables:

    • gcp_account_json - GCP service account file path and file name
    • rancher_server_admin_password - Admin password for created Rancher server

  5. Optional: Modify optional variables within terraform.tfvars. See the Quickstart Readme and the GCP Quickstart Readme for more information. Suggestions include:

    - `gcp_region` - Google GCP region, choose the closest instead of the default- `prefix` - Prefix for all created resources- `machine_type` - Compute instance size used, minimum is `n1-standard-1` but `n1-standard-2` or `n1-standard-4` could be used if within budget- `ssh_key_file_name` - Use a specific SSH key instead of `~/.ssh/id_rsa` (public key is assumed to be `${ssh_key_file_name}.pub`)

  6. Run terraform init.

  7. To initiate the creation of the environment, run terraform apply --auto-approve. Then wait for output similar to the following:

    Apply complete! Resources: 16 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.
Outputs:
rancher_node_ip = xx.xx.xx.xxrancher_server_url = https://rancher.xx.xx.xx.xx.xip.ioworkload_node_ip = yy.yy.yy.yy

  8. Paste the rancher_server_url from the output above into the browser. Log in when prompted (default username is admin, use the password set in rancher_server_admin_password).

Result#

Two Kubernetes clusters are deployed into your GCP account, one running Rancher Server and the other ready for experimentation deployments.

What's Next?#

Use Rancher to create a deployment. For more information, see Creating Deployments.

Destroying the Environment#

  1. From the quickstart/gcp folder, execute terraform destroy --auto-approve.

  2. Wait for confirmation that all resources have been destroyed.