Install Using Rancher

Rancher is an an open-source multi-cluster orchestration platform that makes it easy for you to deploy and manage an application on Kubernetes cluster.

Adeptia packages Rancher and Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE2) along with Adeptia Connect application and other components in Ansible Playbook. You need to download, extract, and run this Playbook to deploy the followings in the same order.

• RKE2 – Rancher Kubernetes Engine to set up Kubernetes environment.

• Rancher UI – UI to centrally manage a multi-cluster Kubernetes environment.

• Longhorn – To implement distributed block storage for Kubernetes.

• Prometheus including Grafana – To monitor the system and its execution environment holistically, for example, CPU usage.

• Elasticsearch, Fluentd, and Kibana (EFK) – To view the logs for each microservice.

• Adeptia Connect application

This page discusses the followings:

Prerequisites and configurations for Playbook execution

Before you begin to run Ansible Playbook, ensure that you have,

• At least three Linux VMs (to be used as master/server nodes) with internet access, each with the following minimum configuration:

  • RAM – 32 GB

  • Processor cores – 8

  • Hard disk – 250 GB

• One Jumpbox with internet access and SSH connectivity with the Linux nodes to download, extract, and run the Playbook.

• Ansible 2.12 (or higher) installed on Jumpbox.
  You can install Ansible on Ubuntu OS by running the following set of commands in the same order:

  $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible
  $ sudo apt install ansible 2.12.10

Where,

The first command adds the Ansible repository and the second one installs Ansible 2.12.10.

• Load Balancer on the top of Linux nodes.

• Administrative privileges on Jumpbox and each node.

• SSH private key in PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail) format for communication between the VMs.

• CA/self signed certificates

• The following inbound ports opened on the Load Balancer and the nodes:

  • 9345 - required for RKE2 nodes clustering

  • 6443 - required for Kubernetes API

• DNS domain load balancer for accessing Rancher UI.

• DNS domain for accessing Adeptia Connect portal.

Once you have met the prerequisites, update the following files containing the details of VMs, DNS, SSH connectivity, and other configuration details required for Adeptia Connect installation. These files are available in Ansible Playbook that you have downloaded and extracted on the Jumpbox.

• inventory file – Defines the hosts (or group of hosts) on which the Playbook runs.

• general-config.yaml - Contains the configuration variables to run the Playbook for Adeptia Connect installation.

• vault-config.yaml - Contains sensitive information, such as passwords, required to validate and run the Playbook.

Steps to update inventory file

1. Open the inventory file.

2. Add the domain name or IP address of the server nodes and RKE2 agent (if you have any) under the [servers] and [agents] groups respectively as shown in the example code snippet below.

# rke2 cluster master/server nodes #
[servers]
xxx.xx.xx.xx
xxx.xx.xx.xx
xxx.xx.xx.xx

# rke2 cluster worker/agent nodes #
[agents]
xxx.xx.xx.xx


To be deleted....
[k8s:children]
servers
agents

[servers:vars]
rke2_type=“server”

[agents:vars]
rke2_type=“agent”

[all:vars]
ansible_user={{ ssh_user }}
ansible_ssh_private_key_file={{ ssh_key_path }}

Steps to update general-config.yaml

1. Navigate to /vars in the Ansible Playbook extracted folder.

2. Open the general-config.yaml file.

3. Update the following properties.

Steps to update vault-config.yaml

1. Navigate to /vars in the Ansible Playbook extracted folder.

2. Open the vault-config.yaml file.

3. Provide the sensitive information, such as RKE2 token, in the respective properties.

Encrypting/Decrypting vault-config.yaml

Optional, when you want to use it. You can encrypt the sensitive information specified in the vault-config.yaml file by using Ansible Vault.

To encrypt the file, navigate to the /vars folder, and then run the following command:

$ ansible-vault encrypt vault-config.yaml

You will be prompted to provide and confirm a password for the file. Once you have confirmed the password, a message “Encryption successful” confirming the encryption will be displayed.

Make them distinguishable

View To decrypt the file, navigate to the /vars folder, and then run the following command:

$ ansible-vault decrypt vault-config.yaml

You will be prompted to enter the encryption password that you had set for the file. Once you enter the password, the file will be decrypted and you will see a message confirming the decryption.

Executing the Ansible Playbook

You can run the Ansible Playbook by executing the adeptia-connect.sh shell file (with appropriate arguments) after you have fulfilled all the prerequisites. Here are the steps to run the adeptia-connect.sh file in default mode by following which all the components including RKE2, Rancher, Longhorn, Prometheus, EFK, and Adeptia Connect get installed.

1. Log in to the Jumpbox.

2. Run the following command to set Read/Write permission on the SSH private key file (PEM):

   $ chmod 0600 <pem file>

3. Run the following command to set executable permission on the adeptia-connect.sh shell file:

   $ chmod +x adeptia-connect.sh

4. Run the following command to execute the shell file, adeptia-connect.sh, available in the Ansible Playbook:

   $ sudo ./adeptia-connect.sh

You can use the tag argument while running the command to execute the shell file for installing different components as per your requirement. For example, if you want to install all the components except for the Adeptia Connect application, run the following command:

$ sudo ./adeptia-connect.sh --tag=install-basic

Following table contains the the list of some tags and their description:

If same cluster but different namespaces for different env

Uninstalling the Ansible Playbook

Here are the steps to uninstall all the components including RKE2, Rancher, Longhorn, Prometheus, EFK, KEDA, and Adeptia Connect.

1. Log in to the Jumpbox.

2. Run the following command to set Read/Write permission on the SSH private key file (PEM):

   $ chmod 0600 <pem file>

3. Run the following command to set executable permission on the adeptia-connect.sh shell file:

   $ chmod +x adeptia-connect.sh

4. Run the following command to execute the shell file, adeptia-connect.sh, available in the Ansible Playbook:

   $ sudo ./adeptia-connect.sh --tag=uninstall-all

This uninstalls all the components. If you want to install different components based on your requirement, you can use the tag argument while executing the shell file. For example, if you want to uninstall Adeptia Connect application only, run the following command:

$ sudo ./adeptia-connect.sh --tag=uninstall-ac