On the digital transformation journey to a full cloud-native landscape, the use of microservices becomes the main approach with the dominant technology for such container orchestration being Kubernetes.⁠^[1] With its large community of developers and abundant features and capabilities, Kubernetes has become the de-facto standard and is included across most container-as-a-service platforms. With all of these technologies in place, both developer and operation teams can effectively deploy, manage and deliver functionality to their end users in a resilient and agile manner.

Agility is driving developers toward more cloud-native methodologies that focus on microservices architectures and streamlined workflows. Container technologies, like Kubernetes, embody this agile approach and help enable cloud-native transformation.

By unifying IT operations with Kubernetes, organizations realize key benefits like increased reliability, improved security and greater efficiencies with standardized automation. Therefore, Kubernetes infrastructure platforms are adopted by enterprises to deliver:

This section outlines the core elements of the SUSE Rancher solution, along with the suggested target platforms and components.

3.1 Solution architecture #

 

The figure below illustrates the high-level architecture of the SUSE Rancher installation that manages multiple downstream Kubernetes clusters:

Figure 3.1: Architecture Overview - SUSE Rancher #

 

Authentication Proxy

A user is authenticated via SUSE Rancher and then, if authorized, can access both the SUSE Rancher environment and the downstream clusters and workloads.

API Server

This provides the programmatic interface back-end for a user, using command line interactions with SUSE Rancher and the managed clusters.

Data Store

The purpose of this service is to capture the configuration and state of SUSE Rancher and the managed clusters to aid in backup and recovery processes.

Cluster Controller

Interacting with a cluster agent on the downstream cluster, the cluster controller allows the communication path for users and services to leverage for workloads and cluster management.

When set up, users can interact with SUSE Rancher through the Web-based user interface (UI), the command line interface (CLI), and programatically through the application programming interface (API). Depending upon the assigned roles, group membership and privileges, a user could:

• manage all clusters, users, roles, projects

• deploy new clusters, import other clusters, or remove existing ones

• manage workloads across respective or labelled clusters

• simply view clusters or workloads, or benefit from what is running

For the best performance and security, the recommended deployment is a dedicated Kubernetes cluster for the SUSE Rancher management server. Running user workloads on this cluster is not advised. After deploying SUSE Rancher, one can then create or import clusters for orchestrated workloads.

This section describes the various components being used to create a SUSE Rancher solution deployment, in the perspective of top to bottom ordering. When completed, the SUSE Rancher instance enables the management of multiple, downstream Kubernetes clusters.

4.2 Software - SUSE Rancher #

 

SUSE Rancher is a Kubernetes native multi-cluster container management platform. It addresses these challenges by delivering the following key functions, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 4.1: Component Overview - SUSE Rancher #

 

Certified Kubernetes Distributions

SUSE Rancher supports management of any CNCF certified Kubernetes distribution for:

• development, edge, branch workloads, SUSE offerings like K3s, a CNCF certified lightweight distribution of Kubernetes

• workload infrastructures, either on-premise or public-cloud based, SUSE offerings like Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE) or Rancher Kubernetes Engine Government (RKE2), as CNCF certified Kubernetes distributions for both bare-metal and virtualized servers

• the public cloud, hosted Kubernetes services like

  • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS⁠^[4]),

  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS⁠^[5]) and

  • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE⁠^[6]).

Simplified Cluster Operations and Infrastructure Management

SUSE Rancher provides simple, consistent cluster operations including provisioning and templates, configuration and lifecycle version management, along with visibility and diagnostics.

Security and Authentication

SUSE Rancher integrates and utilizes existing directory services, to automate processes and apply a consistent set of identity and access management (IAM) plus security policies for all the managed clusters, no matter where they are running.

Policy Enforcement and Governance

SUSE Rancher includes audit and security guideline enforcement, monitoring and logging functions, along with user, network and workload policies distributed across all managed clusters.

Platform Services

SUSE Rancher also provides a rich catalog of services for building, deploying and scaling containerized applications, including app packaging, logging, monitoring and service mesh.

Tip

Learn more information about SUSE Rancher

For a production implementation of SUSE Rancher, deploying upon a Kubernetes platform is required and the next sections describe the suggested component layering approach.

4.3 Software - K3s #

 

K3s is packaged as a single binary, which is about 50 megabytes in size. Bundled in that single binary is everything needed to run Kubernetes anywhere, including low-powered IoT and Edge-based devices. The binary includes:

• the container runtime

• important host utilities such as iptables, socat and du

The only OS dependencies are the Linux kernel itself and a proper dev, proc and sysfs mounts (this is done automatically on all modern Linux distributions). K3s bundles the Kubernetes components:

• kube-apiserver,

• kube-controller-manager,

• kube-scheduler,

• kubelet and

• kube-proxy

into combined processes that are presented as a simple server and agent model, as represented in the following figure:

Figure 4.2: Component Overview - K3s #

 

K3s can run as a complete cluster on a single node or can be expanded into a multi-node cluster. Besides the core Kubernetes components, these are also included:

• containerd,

• Flannel,

• CoreDNS,

• ingress controller and

• a simple host port-based service load balancer.

All of these components are optional and can be swapped out for your implementation of choice. With these included components, you get a fully functional and CNCF-conformant cluster so you can start running apps right away. K3s is now a CNCF Sandbox project, being the first Kubernetes distribution ever to be adopted into sandbox.

Tip

Learn more information about K3s

4.5 Compute Platform #

 

Leveraging the enterprise grade functionality of the operating system mentioned in the previous section, many compute platforms can be the foundation of the deployment:

• Virtual machines on supported hypervisors or hosted on cloud service providers

• Physical, baremetal or single-board computers, either on-premises or hosted by cloud service providers

Note

To complete self-testing of hardware with SUSE YES Certified Process, you can download and install the respective SUSE operating system support-pack version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and the YES test suite. Then run the tests per the instructions in the test kit, fixing any problems encountered and when corrected, re-run all tests to obtain clean test results. Submit the test results into the SUSE Bulletin System (SBS) for audit, review and validation.

Tip

Certified systems and hypervisors can be verified via SUSE YES Certified Bulletins and then can be leveraged as supported nodes for this deployment, as long as the certification refers to the respective version of the underlying SUSE operating system required.

This section describes the process steps for the deployment of the SUSE Rancher solution. It describes the process steps to deploy each of the component layers starting as a base functional proof-of-concept, having considerations on migration toward production, providing scaling guidance that is needed to create the solution.

5.1 Deployment overview #

 

The deployment stack is represented in the following figure:

Figure 5.1: Deployment Stack - SUSE Rancher #

 

and details are covered for each layer in the following sections.

Note

The following section’s content is ordered and described from the bottom layer up to the top.

Using components and offerings from SUSE and the Rancher portfolio streamline the ability to quickly and effectively engage in a digital transformation, taking advantage of cloud-native resources and disciplines. Using such technology approaches lets you deploy and leverage transformations of infrastructure into a durable, reliable enterprise-grade environment.

The following sections provide a bill of materials listing for the respective component layer(s) of the described deployment.

9.2 Software bill of materials #

 

Sample set of software, support and services.

Role	Qty	SKU	Component	Notes
Operating System	1-3	874-006875	SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, x86_64, Priority Subscription, 1 Year	Configuration: per node (up to 2 sockets, stackable) or 2 VMs
Kubernetes Management	1	R-0001-PS1	SUSE Rancher, x86-64, Priority Subscription, 1 Year	Configuration: per deployed instance
Rancher Management	2	R-0004-PS1	Rancher 10 Nodes x86-64 or aarch64, Priority Subscription, 1 Year,	Configuration: requires priority server subscription
Consulting and Training	1	R-0001-QSO	Rancher Quick Start, Go Live Services

Note

For the software components, other support term durations are also available.

Appendix=1 ArchOv=1 Automation=1 Availability=1 BP=1 BPBV=1 CompMod=1 DepConsiderations=1 Deployment=1 FCTR=1 FLVR=1 GFDL=1 Glossary=1 HWComp=1 HWDepCfg=1 Integrity=1 LN=1 PoC=1 Production=1 RA=1 RI=1 References=1 Requirements=1 SWComp=1 SWDepCfg=1 Scaling=1 Security=1 docdate=2022-03-28 env-daps=1 focusRancher=1 iK3s=1 iRKE1=1 iRKE2=1 iRMT=1 iRancher=1 iSLEMicro=1 iSLES=1 iSUMa=1 layerK3s=1 layerSLES=1

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