Rancher 1.6 Docs

Kubernetes - Cloud Providers

In Kubernetes, there is a concept of cloud providers, which is a module which provides an interface for managing load balancers, nodes (i.e. hosts) and networking routes.

Currently, Rancher supports two cloud providers when installing Kubernetes.

Rancher

• Nodes: Supports any hosts that can be added in Rancher.
• Load Balancers: Launches Rancher’s load balancer, which uses HAproxy and the rancher/lb-service-haproxy image, as a Load Balancer service. By default, the load balancer will round robin traffic to the pods.

By default, the orchestration for Kubernetes is set to rancher.

AWS

• Nodes: Supports only AWS hosts added either as a custom host or through the Rancher UI.
• Load Balancers: Launches an AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) as a Load Balancer service. You can still create Rancher load balancers by using an ingress.
• Persistent Volumes: Ability to use AWS Elastic Block Stores (EBS) for persistent volumes.

  Setting up AWS as the Cloud Provider

Before creating a Kubernetes environment, the Kubernetes infrastructure stack will need to be configured and the configuration option for the Cloud Provider will need to be set as aws.

New Environments

When creating new environments, you will need to select an environment template that is already configured correctly. When adding or editing an environment template, the orchestration will need to have Kubernetes selected. Click on Edit Config. Pick aws in the Configuration Options -> Cloud Provider and click Configure.

For existing Kubernetes environment templates, you can edit the environment template under the Manage Environments link from the drop down of environments. Click on the Edit icon next to the environment template running Kubernetes.

Converting Existing Cattle Environments to Kubernetes

If you have an existing Cattle environment, the environment can be converted to a Kubernetes orchestration by going to Catalog -> library and selecting Kubernetes. Click on View Details and switch to aws for the Cloud Provider. Click on Launch

Adding Hosts

After Kubernetes has been configured to run with an aws cloud provider, any hosts added into the environment will need to be an AWS EC2 instance and have at least the following IAM policy:

{
  "Effect": "Allow",
  "Action": "ec2:Describe*",
  "Resource": "*"
}

In order to use Elastic Load Balancers (ELB) and EBS with Kubernetes, the host will need to have the an IAM role with appropriate access.

Example Policy for IAM Role:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "ec2:Describe*",
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "ec2:AttachVolume",
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "ec2:DetachVolume",
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["ec2:*"],
      "Resource": ["*"]
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["elasticloadbalancing:*"],
      "Resource": ["*"]
    }
  ]
}

Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) as a Kubernetes service

After configuring Kubernetes to use aws as a cloud provider and ensuring the host has the appropriate IAM policy for ELB, you can start creating load balancers.

Example lb.yml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: nginx-lb
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    app: nginx
  ports:
  - name: http
    port: 80
    protocol: TCP

Using kubectl, let’s launch our load balancer service into Kubernetes. Remember, you can either configure kubectl for your local machine or you can use the shell in the UI under Kubernetes -> kubectl.

$ kubectl create -f lb.yml
service "nginx-lb" created
$ kubectl describe services nginx-lb
Name:			nginx-lb
Namespace:		default
Labels:			app=nginx
Selector:		name=nginx
Type:			LoadBalancer
IP:			10.43.137.5
LoadBalancer Ingress:	a4c7d4290f48011e690470275ac52fef-1158549671.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com
Port:			http	80/TCP
NodePort:		http	32166/TCP
Endpoints:		<none>
Session Affinity:	None
Events:
  FirstSeen	LastSeen	Count	From			SubObjectPath	Type		Reason			Message
  ---------	--------	-----	----			-------------	--------	------			-------
  17s		17s		1	{service-controller }			Normal		CreatingLoadBalancer	Creating load balancer
  14s		14s		1	{service-controller }			Normal		CreatedLoadBalancer	Created load balancer

Using EBS Volumes

After configuring Kubernetes to use aws as a cloud provider and ensuring the host has the appropriate IAM policy for EBS, you can start using EBS volumes.