Rancher is a Kubernetes management GUI tool to deploy and run clusters anywhere. It can be used to manage multiple clusters running in different providers like AWS, GCP, on-prem, etc.
Installation
The Rancher Server can be run as a container or pod on a standalone server or the same server where the cluster is running. It can also be installed as a Helm chart on multiple servers for high availability. Refer Installing/Upgrading Rancher | Rancher.
docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped \ -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \ --privileged \ rancher/rancher:latest
The above method of starting the Rancher server uses self-signed certificates. So, the browser will warn it as unsafe.
Registering a cluster to Rancher
Go to clusters → Import Existing → Enter the cluster name → Run the provided
kubectl apply command on the cluster to register it with the Rancher server.The above step creates a
cattle-cluster-agent deployment (along with a corresponding service) which reports the cluster state to the Rancher agent.A cluster should only be registered to one rancher server.