Clarify a few things in quickstart guide

[RegisHubelia]

Hey there. If I may add a few comments to the quickstart guide:

1. The first part says "Follow this guide to have an auto-deployed cluster via rke2/k3s and managed by Rancher". Then at the end of the quickstart.md file, you say: You can now boot your nodes with this ISO, and they will:

• Boot from the ISO
• Register with the registrationURL given and create a per-machine #!yaml MachineInventory
• Install Elemental Teal to the given device
• Restart
• Auto-deploy the cluster via k3s

But we cannot see any options to deploy rke2 instead of k3s? Maybe I misunderstood?

2. The other thing, you state in the requirements that we need an active Rancher cluster V2.6.6 - but can we clarify if/how we can actually build a rancher cluster using elemental like we used to be able to do in os2 before all the changes towards elemental?

Thanks!

[kkaempf]

But we cannot see any options to deploy rke2 instead of k3s? Maybe I misunderstood?

Take a closer look at cluster.yaml, there's

  kubernetesVersion: v1.23.7+k3s1

at the end. This is where you can influence the version and if it'll be k3s or rke2 😉 (Just be aware that Kubernetes 1.24.x isn't supported by Rancher v2.6.6 yet)

2. The other thing, you state in the requirements that we need an active Rancher cluster V2.6.6 - but can we clarify if/how we can actually build a rancher cluster using elemental like we used to be able to do in os2 before all the changes towards elemental?

I'm not sure you could "build from scratch" with - what we call now - "the old stack (aka os2)". The primary goal (as of now) for Elemental is to deploy bare-metal at the edge under the control of a "management cluster".

That said, there's nothing in the current architecture that would prevent deployment without a management cluster, we just haven't put any focus on this use-case yet.

[RegisHubelia]

Thank you for your reply. Thanks for clarifying for rke2/k3s.

Yes, I was able to build from scratch a management cluster with the old stack (rancherd?). There were options to deploy a fully functional multicluster rancher management cluster. With that said, a better formulated question would be "Can we build a multicluster rancher management cluster from scratch with elemental and if so - how?". From your comment, I understand, there wasn't any focus on this use case yet.

That said, i'm really excited about Elemental.

Regards,

[kkaempf]

Well, if it was possible with os2, it should be possible with Elemental. The architecture in general hasn't changed, we "just" renamed some pieces

• ros-installer is now elemental-register + elemental-cli
• rancherd is now elemental-system-agent
• rancheros-operator is now elemental-operator

Also key names in the config yamls have changed, any "os2" or "rancheros" values are now "elemental".

Can you attach your old config files and a brief description of your workflow ? We can try to reproduce it using the "elemental" stack 🤞🏻

[RegisHubelia]

Sure. What I did was to boot from the iso, and create a config file like this one:

#cloud-config

rancheros:
  install:
    # An http://, https://, or tftp:// URL to load as the base configuration
    # for this configuration. This configuration can include any install
    # directives or OEM configuration. The resulting merged configuration
    # will be read by the installer and all content of the merged config will
    # be stored in /oem/99_custom.yaml in the created image.
    # configURL: http://example.com/machine-cloud-config
    # Turn on verbose logging for the installation process
    debug: false
    # The target device that will be formatted and grub will be install on.
    # The partition table will be cleared and recreated with the default
    # partition layout. If noFormat is set to true this parameter is only
    # used to install grub.
    device: /dev/sda
    # If the system has the path /sys/firmware/efi it will be treated as a
    # UEFI system. If you are creating an UEFI image on a non-EFI platform
    # then this flag will force the installer to use UEFI even if not detected.
    forceEFI: false
    # If true then it is assumed that the disk is already formatted with the standard
    # partitions need by RancherOS.  Refer to the partition table section below for the
    # exact requirements. Also, if this is set to true
    noFormat: false
    # After installation the system will reboot by default.  If you wish to instead
    # power off the system set this to true.
    powerOff: true
    # The installed image will set the default console to the current TTY value
    # used during the installation.  To force the installation to use a different TTY
    # then set that value here.
    tty: ttyS0

# Any other cloud-init values can be included in this file and will be stored in
# /oem/99_custom.yaml of the installed image

# Add additional users or set the password/ssh keys for root
users:
- name: "root"
  passwd: "apassword"
  shell: "/bin/bash"

# Assigns these keys to the first user in users or root if there
# is none
# ssh_authorized_keys:
#   - asdd

# Run these commands once the system has fully booted
# runcmd:
# - foo

# Hostname to assign
hostname: "ahostname"

# Write arbitrary files
# write_files:
# - encoding: b64
#   content: CiMgVGhpcyBmaWxlIGNvbnRyb2xzIHRoZSBzdGF0ZSBvZiBTRUxpbnV4
#   path: /foo/bar
#   permissions: "0644"
#   owner: "bar"

# Rancherd configuration
write_files:
- container: ntp
  path: /etc/ntp.conf
  permissions: "0644"
  owner: root
  content: |
    server 1.pool.ntp.org iburst
    server 0.pool.ntp.org iburst

    restrict default nomodify nopeer noquery limited kod
    restrict 127.0.0.1
    restrict [::1]
rancherd:
  address: x.x.x.x
  internalAddress: x.x.x.x
  kubernetesVersion: stable:rke2
  rancherVersion: stable
  nodeName: nodename
  rancherValues:
    auditLog:
      destination: sidecar
      hostPath: /var/log/rancher/audit/
      level: 0
      maxAge: 1
      maxBackup: 1
      maxSize: 100
    features: multi-cluster-management=true
    hostPort: 0
    hostname: ahostname
    ingress:
      enabled: true
      hosts:
      includeDefaultExtraAnnotations: true
      extraAnnotations: {}
      tls:
    # options: rancher, letsEncrypt, secret
        source: secret
        secretName: tls-rancher-ingress
    noDefaultAdmin: false
    replicas: -3
    tls: ingress
  role: cluster-init
  tlsSans:
  - sometlssans
  token: atoken
users:
- name: root
  passwd: apassword
  shell: /bin/bash

After this, if the config file was config.yaml, I ran ros-installer --config-file ./config.yaml - and this would build a 1 node Multi-Cluster management cluster. After that, I joined more nodes using similar config file during installation.

[Itxaka]

Thank you for your reply. Thanks for clarifying for rke2/k3s.

Good point in here, I will add a small excerpt below to mention how to change between rke2/k3s versions :+1:

[Itxaka]

A section was added to point out the different rk2/k3s versions, how to choose them and where to set them.