When you are using Rancher to manage your Kubernetes clusters, at some point you will encounter the terms Rancher, RKE, and custom cluster. If you are new to Rancher, it can be difficult to understand the difference between and purpose of each of these concepts. In this post, I will go over what each component is used for and how they are used together in parts of the system.
Etcd is an open-source distributed key-value store created by the CoreOS team, now managed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It is pronounced “et-cee-dee”, making reference to distributing the Unix “/etc” directory, where most global configuration files live, across multiple machines. It serves as the backbone of many distributed systems, providing a reliable way for storing data across a cluster of servers.
Kubernetes clusters can manage large numbers of unrelated workloads concurrently and organizations often choose to deploy projects created by separate teams to shared clusters. Even with relatively light use, the number of deployed objects can quickly become unmanageable, slowing down operational responsiveness and increasing the chance of dangerous mistakes.
This article analyzes the recent CNCF article, '9 Kubernetes Security Best Practices Everyone Must Follow' and discusses how Rancher, RKE, and RancherOS satisfy these by default. I also discuss the Rancher Hardening Guide, which covers 101 more security changes that will secure your Kubernetes clusters.
This blog describes steps to migrate Rancher 2.1.x from a single node installation to a high availability installation.
This blog describes how Rancher and its managed kubernetes clusters can be affected by the recent announcement detailing the vulnerabilities of the proxying external IPs and dashboard.
Learn how to create a hybrid Kubernetes registry for any application deployed on any cluster managed by Rancher and JFrog Artifactory.
This tutorial walks through using Rancher to deploy Elasticsearch into a Kubernetes cluster. At the end of this article, you will have a fully functional 2-node Elasticsearch cluster, complete with sample data and examples of successful queries.
Ankur Agarwal, Rancher's Head of Product Management, describes new features in Rancher 2.2. Learn how to monitor multiple Kubernetes clusters in this step-by-step tutorial and how our Alpha Release process works.
Today Rancher announces a partnership with Arm to create a Kubernetes-based platform for IoT, edge, and data center nodes, all powered by Arm servers. Rancher and Arm are working jointly on a Smart City project in China. Read more here.
