Rancher Prime on K3s — profile guide¶

This guide covers the rancher profile: a single VM running Rancher Prime on K3s, no Harvester. It is the smallest lab in rodeo-cli (~10 GiB RAM) and the fastest to deploy (minutes, not hours).

Use it when the workshop or demo focuses on Rancher multi-cluster management rather than Harvester HCI.

What you get¶

Component	Default IP	Port
Rancher Prime (Rancher UI)	192.168.122.9	30002 (NodePort)
Rancher UI via host DNAT	host IP	30002
SSH access	`rodeo ssh rancher`

The VM boots from a cloud image (Leap 16 or SLES 16 — no iPXE, no long install wait). Rancher installs via Helm on K3s and becomes reachable a few minutes after the VM starts.

Host requirements¶

Resource	Minimum
OS	Linux with KVM and nested virt (if host is a VM)
RAM	~10 GiB available
Disk	~80 GiB free in `/var/lib/libvirt/images`
CPU	~4 vCPU to spare
Python	3.10+

Run rodeo doctor to check your host and confirm this profile fits.

Deploy¶

rodeo up --profile rancher

rodeo up checks the host, installs any missing packages (with your consent), generates credentials, and starts the deploy. It self-escalates with sudo — you do not need to prefix sudo yourself.

rodeo up wraps itself in a tmux session (rodeo-rancher) automatically, so a dropped SSH connection does not kill the deploy. Re-attach with tmux attach -t rodeo-rancher. Use --no-tmux to skip this in scripts.

If rodeo up is already installed and you have already run install-deps once:

rodeo up --profile rancher --yes    # skip all prompts

What happens during deploy¶

The pipeline runs these phases in order:

kvm_host — sets up libvirt, firewall rules, and the storage pool on the host
vms — downloads the cloud image, injects cloud-init, creates the VM disk and libvirt definition
boot — starts the libvirt network and the VM (no PXE wait needed)
rancher — waits for the VM to get an IP, installs K3s, deploys Rancher Prime via Helm, waits for the UI to become healthy
finalise — enables VM autostart on host reboot (skipped on Instruqt; use rodeo start-if-needed on hostimage boot instead of baking finalise into the image)

Total time: 5–15 minutes on a typical host.

Log in¶

After rodeo up finishes it prints the Rancher URL and credentials. If you need them again:

rodeo status

URL: https://<host-ip>:30002
Username: admin
Password: the value of rancher_admin_password in ~/.rodeo/secrets.yaml

First login will prompt you to confirm the server URL. Use the host IP (the one shown in rodeo status), not localhost.

Day-2 operations¶

Task	Command
Check VM and service health	`rodeo status`
SSH into the Rancher VM	`rodeo ssh rancher`
Tail serial log	`rodeo logs rancher`
Restart the VM	`rodeo restart rancher`
Graceful stop	`rodeo stop --all --yes`
Start after stop	`rodeo start --all --yes`
Destroy the lab	`rodeo clean --yes`
Full host reset	`rodeo clean --all --yes --secrets`

Resume a failed deploy¶

rodeo status                    # find the last failed phase
rodeo deploy --from rancher     # resume from that phase

Instruqt workflow¶

Set deployment_target: instruqt in rodeo-plan.yaml before deploying so finalise is skipped. Do not bake finalise into a hostimage (autostart can hang the Instruqt agent / console). After deploy, follow the success-screen checklist, Save the hostimage, and put rodeo start-if-needed in the track setup script so the lab comes up on every boot. See Instruqt example.

Customize¶

All settings live in ~/.rodeo/profiles/rancher/ (if deployed via --profile) or your local lab dir.

Override resources at deploy time:

rodeo deploy -P resources.rancher.memory_mib=12288
rodeo deploy -P resources.rancher.vcpu=6

To make a modified copy you can edit and redeploy:

rodeo new myrancher --from rancher
$EDITOR ~/.rodeo/profiles/myrancher/rodeo-plan.yaml
rodeo up --profile myrancher

Full format reference: Create your own rodeo.