Rancher server is installed using the Helm package manager for Kubernetes.

1. Install Helm and Tiller with a service account. For detailed instruction, see the Helm Quickstart Guide. 

2. Add the Helm chart repository that contains charts to install Rancher.

helm repo add rancher-latest https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/latest

3. Create a namespace for Rancher as cattle-system. 

kubectl create namespace cattle-system

The cert-manager is a Kubernetes add-on to automate the management and issuance of TLS certificates from various issuing sources. Rancher relies on cert-manager to issue certificates from Rancher’s own generated CA or to request Let us Encrypt certificates.

4. Install cert-manager by following these steps:

$ kubectl apply --validate=false -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jetstack/cert-manager/release-0.12/deploy/manifests/00-crds.yaml

$ kubectl create namespace cert-manager

$ kubectl label namespace cert-manager certmanager.k8s.io/disable-validation=true

$ helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io

$ helm repo update

$ helm install \

> --name cert-manager \

> --namespace cert-manager \

> --version v0.12.0 \

> jetstack/cert-manager

5. Check the cert-manager namespace for running pods to verify it is deployed correctly.

$ kubectl get pods -n cert-manager

NAME                                      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE

cert-manager-75cf57777c-ztw9f             1/1     Running   0          2m2s

cert-manager-cainjector-f54c57bf8-wkc2z   1/1     Running   0          2m2s

cert-manager-webhook-76794c6967-84gb6     1/1     Running   0          2m2s

6. Install Rancher with Helm.

[root@rancher ~]# helm install rancher-latest/rancher \

> --name rancher \

> --namespace cattle-system \

> --set hostname=rancher.rack9lab.com

NAME:   rancher

LAST DEPLOYED: Tue Jan 21 03:21:58 2020

NAMESPACE: cattle-system

STATUS: DEPLOYED

..

..

NOTES:

Rancher Server has been installed.

NOTE: Rancher may take several minutes to fully initialize. Please standby while Certificates are being issued and Ingress comes up.

Check out Rancher docs at https://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/

Browse to https://rancher.rack9lab.com

Happy Containering!

[root@rancher ~]#

7. Check the cattle-system namespace for running pods to verify if the namespace is deployed correctly.

[root@rancher helm]# kubectl get pods –cattle-system

NAMESPACE       NAME                                      READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE

cattle-system   cattle-cluster-agent-85db6685cd-vvft9     1/1     Running     0          7h19m

cattle-system   cattle-node-agent-6c8nw                   1/1     Running     0          7h19m

cattle-system   cattle-node-agent-jhw2n                   1/1     Running     0          7h19m

cattle-system   cattle-node-agent-wh78g                   1/1     Running     0          7h19m

cattle-system   rancher-5d549cb9c8-2xmj5                  1/1     Running     0          7h23m

cattle-system   rancher-5d549cb9c8-8bbzs                  1/1     Running     0          7h23m

cattle-system   rancher-5d549cb9c8-bh22p                  1/1     Running     0          7h23m

Result:  Rancher is up and running.

8. Browse to https://rancher.rack9lab.com to access the functional Rancher server.

Figure 6.              Rancher Server login

Result: The three nodes are listed in the local cluster that represent the Rancher Management Cluster.

Figure 7.              Nodes in the Rancher Management Cluster