Rancher Terraform

The Rancher Terraform Provider allows administrators to create and manage RKE2 guest clusters using Terraform.

Deployment

Prerequisites

The Kubernetes cluster is built on top of Harvester VMs.
The Harvester VMs that run as guest Kubernetes nodes are in the same namespace.

Deploy Guest Clusters Using the Rancher Terraform Provider

Create an API key.

On the Rancher UI, go to Account & API Keys > Create API key > Create.
Obtain the Harvester cluster ID.

On the Rancher UI, go to Virtualization Management > Manage > Related Resources > Mgmt Cluster Name.

Obtain the kubeconfig for the Harvester Cloud Provider and the Harvester CSI Driver.

UI
Shell

On the Rancher UI, go to Virtualization Management. Locate the target Harvester cluster in the list and then select ⋮ > Download KubeConfig.

# Generate harvester cloud provider kubeconfig
RANCHER_SERVER_URL="<RANCHER_SERVER_URL>" # Pure server URL like https://192.168.0.181:6443
RANCHER_ACCESS_KEY="<RANCHER_ACCESS_KEY>"
RANCHER_SECRET_KEY="<RANCHER_SECRET_KEY>"
HARVESTER_CLUSTER_ID="<HARVESTER_CLUSTER_ID>"
CLUSTER_NAME="rke2-demo"
curl -k -X POST ${RANCHER_SERVER_URL}/k8s/clusters/${HARVESTER_CLUSTER_ID}/v1/harvester/kubeconfig \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-u ${RANCHER_ACCESS_KEY}:${RANCHER_SECRET_KEY} \
-d '{"clusterRoleName": "harvesterhci.io:cloudprovider", "namespace": "default", "serviceAccountName": "'${CLUSTER_NAME}'"}' | xargs | sed 's/\\n/\n/g' > ${CLUSTER_NAME}-kubeconfig

Prepare a provider.tf file with the following content:

 terraform {
 required_providers {
     rancher2 = {
         source  = "rancher/rancher2"
         version = "4.2.0"
         }
     }
 }

 # Configure the Rancher2 provider to admin
 provider "rancher2" {
     api_url    = "<api_url>" # API Endpoint on Account & API Keys page
     access_key = "<access_key>"
     secret_key = "<secret_key>"
     insecure   = true # Set to true if the Rancher server uses a self-signed certificate
 }

Prepare a main.tf file with the following content:

 # Get imported harvester cluster info
 data "rancher2_cluster_v2" "harv" {
     name = "<harvester_cluster_name_in_rancher>"
 }

 # Create a new Cloud Credential for an imported Harvester cluster
 resource "rancher2_cloud_credential" "harv-cred" {
     name = "harv-cred"
     harvester_credential_config {
         cluster_id = data.rancher2_cluster_v2.harv.cluster_v1_id
         cluster_type = "imported"
         kubeconfig_content = data.rancher2_cluster_v2.harv.kube_config
     }
 }

 # Create a new rancher2 machine config v2 using harvester node_driver
 resource "rancher2_machine_config_v2" "rke2-machine" {
     generate_name = "rke2-machine"
     harvester_config {
         vm_namespace = "default"
         cpu_count = "2"
         memory_size = "4"
         disk_info = <<EOF
         {
             "disks": [{
                 "imageName": "default/<vmimage-name>",
                 "size": 15,
                 "bootOrder": 1
             }]
         }
         EOF
         network_info = <<EOF
         {
             "interfaces": [{
                 "networkName": "default/<network-name>"
             }]
         }
         EOF
         ssh_user = "<ssh_user>"
         user_data = <<EOF
         package_update: true
         packages:
         - qemu-guest-agent
         - iptables
         runcmd:
         - - systemctl
             - enable
             - '--now'
             - qemu-guest-agent.service
         EOF
     }
 }

 resource "rancher2_cluster_v2" "rke2-demo" {
     name = "rke2-demo"
     kubernetes_version = "v1.28.10+rke2r1"
     rke_config {
         machine_pools {
             name = "pool1"
             cloud_credential_secret_name = rancher2_cloud_credential.harv-cred.id
             control_plane_role = true
             etcd_role = true
             worker_role = true
             quantity = 1
             machine_config {
                 kind = rancher2_machine_config_v2.rke2-machine.kind
                 name = rancher2_machine_config_v2.rke2-machine.name
             }
         }

         machine_selector_config {
             config = yamlencode({
                 cloud-provider-config = file("${path.module}/rke2-demo-kubeconfig")
                 cloud-provider-name = "harvester"
             })
         }

         machine_global_config = <<EOF
         cni: "calico"
         disable-kube-proxy: false
         etcd-expose-metrics: false
         EOF

         upgrade_strategy {
             control_plane_concurrency = "1"
             worker_concurrency = "1"
         }

         etcd {
             snapshot_schedule_cron = "0 */5 * * *"
             snapshot_retention = 5
         }

         chart_values = <<EOF
         harvester-cloud-provider:
         clusterName: rke2-demo
         cloudConfigPath: /var/lib/rancher/rke2/etc/config-files/cloud-provider-config
         EOF
     }
 }

Run terraform init.
Run terraform apply.