Rancher on CloudControl

Uses the Docker Machine driver for CloudControl from within Rancher to create nodes.

Cattle, Swarm, and Kubernetes have been verified to work.

Getting started

To deploy, you will need:

• Terraform v0.7 or higher
• Terraform ddcloud provider v1.1.3 or higher
• Ansible v2.0 or higher
• An OSX or Linux client machine
  It might work on Windows, but I haven't tested it. If you have problems, try using Windows 10's Ubuntu on Windows feature or a Linux VM
• An SSH private / public key pair (e.g. id_rsa / id_rsa.pub)
• Your CloudControl credentials configured in the MCP_USER and MCP_PASSWORD environment variables
• A tag key called "roles" defined in CloudControl
• A DNS service hosted in AWS Route 53
  Note - if you don't want DNS, just delete terraform/dns.tf and you're good to go.

1. Edit terraform/main.tf to configure target data center, etc
2. If you're not using AWS Route 53, delete terraform/dns.tf.
3. Run ./setup.py (if you leave the "Client IP" question blank, it will attempt to auto-detect it)
   Note that if you're running these scripts on a server within an MCP network domain, then you may have difficulty contacting ifconfig.co and so you will want to explicitly specify network domain's SNAT (source NAT) address as the client IP:
   
4. cd terraform
5. terraform plan
6. Check that there are no errors and you're happy with the output
7. terraform apply
8. terraform refresh
9. terraform output
10. Note the Rancher and worker host IPs.
11. cd ../ansible
12. ansible-playbook playbooks/upgrade-packages.yml
13. ansible-playbook rancher-ddcloud.yml
14. Open your web browser and navigate to http://<rancher-host-public-ip>:8080/
15. Secure your installation of Rancher by going to Admin, then Access-Control, then Local Security
16. Go to Default, then Manage Environments, then click the pencil next to the default environment; choose Kubernetes and press save
17. You can now go to Infrastructure, then Hosts, then Add Hosts.
18. Choose "Something Else", and enter http://<rancher-host-private-ip>:8080
19. Choose your orchestrator and either:
20. Add existing servers (such as the workers created by this example) using the generic driver
21. Add new servers using the ddcloud driver

Note that the deployment process added a new SSH keypair to the Rancher container (/id_rsa and /id_rsa.pub) that can be used by the various Docker Machine drivers.

If you're in a hurry, step 12 is optional, but you're probably better off working with up-to-date packages :)

Adding hosts

You'll now want to add a couple of hosts to Rancher so you can deploy environments.

1. Go to Environments, then Manage environments.
2. Click the pen on the right of the row for the default environment.
3. Pick your orchestrator at the top of the page.
   If you're not that comfortable with Docker or orchestration yet, try Cattle or Swarm.

For more information, see the Rancher documentation on hosts.

generic driver for Docker Machine

(AF: sorry, haven't automated this yet)

To use the generic driver:

1. Go to Admin, then Machine Drivers, then click the play icon inside the box marked generic
2. The driver should become active
3. ssh root@<rancher-host-private-ip>
4. cat /root/rancher_keys/id_rsa.pub
5. Copy the result to the clipboard.
6. exit
7. From the ansible directory, run ansible all -m authorized_key -a 'user=root key="<pasted-SSH-public-key>"'

ddcloud driver for Docker Machine

To enable the ddcloud driver:

1. Go to Admin, then Machine Drivers, the Add Machine Driver
2. In "Download URL", enter https://azuretesting2.blob.core.windows.net/public/docker-machine-driver-ddcloud then click Create.
3. You can now go back to Infrastructure then Hosts
4. If the hosts are being deployed onto the same VLAN as the Rancher host, make sure to the usePrivateIp checkbox is checked for each host you add.

Now what?

For more information, see the Rancher quick-start guide.

Troubleshooting

If you have trouble running Ansible

Ansible says "access denied" when trying to connnect to a newly-deployed server

Try connecting to the host manually to see if you get a more informative error message:

ssh root@host_ip

If SSH prompts you for a password, this means the host doesn't recognise your default key as authorised to connect. Press Ctrl-C, and then run:

ssh -i x/y/x/id_rsa root@host_ip

Where x/y/z/id_rsa is the folder where your SSH key is located (same path supplied to the question in setup.py but without the .pub on the end).

If you already have Rancher deployed

1. ssh root@<rancher-host-public-ip>
2. docker logs -f rancher-server

If you see errors in the log about shell detection, try changing the image name from "Ubuntu 14.04 2 CPU" to "CentOS 7 64-bit 2 CPU".