Skip to content

Quick Start

This guide will help you quickly launch a cluster with default options.

New to Kubernetes? The official Kubernetes docs already have some great tutorials outlining the basics here.

Prerequisites

  • Make sure your environment fulfills the requirements. If NetworkManager is installed and enabled on your hosts, ensure that it is configured to ignore CNI-managed interfaces.

  • For RKE2 versions 1.21 and higher, if the host kernel supports AppArmor, the AppArmor tools (usually available via the apparmor-parser package) must also be present prior to installing RKE2.

  • The RKE2 installation process must be run as the root user or through sudo.

Server Node Installation

RKE2 provides an installation script that is a convenient way to install it as a service on systemd based systems. This script is available at https://get.rke2.io. To install RKE2 using this method do the following:

1. Run the installer

curl -sfL https://get.rke2.io | sh -

This will install the rke2-server service and the rke2 binary onto your machine. Due to its nature, It will fail unless it runs as the root user or through sudo.

2. Enable the rke2-server service

systemctl enable rke2-server.service

3. Start the service

systemctl start rke2-server.service

4. Follow the logs, if you like

journalctl -u rke2-server -f

After running this installation:

  • The rke2-server service will be installed. The rke2-server service will be configured to automatically restart after node reboots or if the process crashes or is killed.
  • Additional utilities will be installed at /var/lib/rancher/rke2/bin/. They include: kubectl, crictl, and ctr. Note that these are not on your path by default.
  • Two cleanup scripts will be installed to the path at /usr/local/bin/rke2. They are: rke2-killall.sh and rke2-uninstall.sh.
  • A kubeconfig file will be written to /etc/rancher/rke2/rke2.yaml.
  • A token that can be used to register other server or agent nodes will be created at /var/lib/rancher/rke2/server/node-token

Note: If you are adding additional server nodes, you must have an odd number in total. An odd number is needed to maintain quorum. See the High Availability documentation for more details.

Linux Agent (Worker) Node Installation

The steps on this section requires root level access or sudo to work.

1. Run the installer

curl -sfL https://get.rke2.io | INSTALL_RKE2_TYPE="agent" sh -

This will install the rke2-agent service and the rke2 binary onto your machine. Due to its nature, It will fail unless it runs as the root user or through sudo.

2. Enable the rke2-agent service

systemctl enable rke2-agent.service

3. Configure the rke2-agent service

mkdir -p /etc/rancher/rke2/
vim /etc/rancher/rke2/config.yaml

Content for config.yaml:

server: https://<server>:9345
token: <token from server node>

Note: The rke2 server process listens on port 9345 for new nodes to register. The Kubernetes API is still served on port 6443, as normal.

4. Start the service

systemctl start rke2-agent.service

Follow the logs, if you like

journalctl -u rke2-agent -f

Note: Each machine must have a unique hostname. If your machines do not have unique hostnames, set the node-name parameter in the config.yaml file and provide a value with a valid and unique hostname for each node.

To read more about the config.yaml file, see the Install Options documentation.

Windows Agent (Worker) Node Installation

Windows Support is currently Experimental as of v1.21.3+rke2r1 Windows Support requires choosing Calico as the CNI for the RKE2 cluster

0. Prepare the Windows Agent Node

Note The Windows Server Containers feature needs to be enabled for the RKE2 agent to work.

Open a new Powershell window with Administrator privileges 

powershell -Command "Start-Process PowerShell -Verb RunAs"

In the new Powershell window, run the following command. 

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName containers –All
This will require a reboot for the Containers feature to properly function.

1. Download the Install Script

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rancher/rke2/master/install.ps1 -Outfile install.ps1
This script will download the rke2.exe Windows binary onto your machine.

2. Configure the rke2-agent for Windows

New-Item -Type Directory c:/etc/rancher/rke2 -Force
Set-Content -Path c:/etc/rancher/rke2/config.yaml -Value @"
server: https://<server>:9345
token: <token from server node>
"@

To read more about the config.yaml file, see the Install Options documentation.

3. Configure PATH

$env:PATH+=";c:\var\lib\rancher\rke2\bin;c:\usr\local\bin"

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable(
    "Path",
    [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine) + ";c:\var\lib\rancher\rke2\bin;c:\usr\local\bin",
    [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)

4. Run the Installer

./install.ps1

5. Start the Windows RKE2 Service

rke2.exe agent service --add
Note: Each machine must have a unique hostname.

If you would prefer to use CLI parameters only instead, run the binary with the desired parameters. 

rke2.exe agent --token <> --server <>