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Exercise 1: The Arrival

Time: 30 min
Next: Exercise 2: The Subterranean Divide

Vertex Trust Bank is drowning in legacy hypervisor costs. Sarah, the CTO, hands you a fresh SUSE Virtualization (Harvester) cluster and a Rancher Prime instance that do not know about each other yet. Your first job: connect them, tour the UIs, and confirm you can drive the platform from a terminal.

After rodeo up, Harvester and Rancher are up; import is intentionally left for you. Passwords are in ~/.rodeo/secrets.yaml on the KVM host (harvester_admin_password, rancher_admin_password).

Field Value
Username admin
Harvester UI https://<host-ip>:8443
Rancher UI https://<host-ip>:30002
Passwords from ~/.rodeo/secrets.yaml

Note: Both UIs use self-signed certificates. Accept the browser security warning when it appears.

1.1 Verify both backends

From a shell on the KVM host:

curl -sk https://192.168.122.10/v1 | jq -r '.apiVersion'
curl -sk https://192.168.122.9:30002/v3 | jq -r '.type'
rodeo status

Expect a Harvester API version and collection from Rancher. rodeo status should show three Harvester nodes and the rancher VM running.

1.2 Import Harvester into Rancher

  1. Open Rancher at https://<host-ip>:30002 and log in as admin.
  2. Left sidebar → Virtualization Management → Import Existing.
  3. Set Cluster Name to harvester (exact name, later exercises assume it).
  4. Click Create, then copy the registration URL shown (https://192.168.122.9:30002/v3/import/...yaml).

In the Harvester UI (https://<host-ip>:8443):

  1. Left sidebar → Settings (gear).
  2. Find cluster-registration-url → edit → paste the URL → Save.

Wait 1-3 minutes. In Rancher → Virtualization Management the cluster moves Pending → Waiting → Active.

Important: the cluster name must be exactly harvester. Later exercises assume it.

1.3 Tour the SUSE Virtualization dashboard

Open the Harvester UI (directly or via Rancher → Virtualization Management → harvester).

On the Dashboard, confirm:

  • Hosts - three nodes
  • Virtual Machines - empty for now
  • Images, Volumes, capacity and metrics panels
  • Bottom-left Support → Download KubeConfig (save it, you will need it)
  • Generate Support Bundle - know where it is for real incidents

Do not change anything yet. This exercise is orientation plus the import.

1.4 Meet Rancher Prime

Back in Rancher:

  • Cluster Management still lists local (Rancher's own K3s).
  • Virtualization Management now lists harvester as Active.

Rancher is the fleet commander: identity, multi-cluster, and later the place you provision guest Kubernetes. Harvester remains the place you run VMs.

1.5 Terminal access

From the KVM host:

rodeo ssh harvester1
kubectl get nodes
kubectl get pods -n harvester-system | grep -v Completed
exit

All three nodes should be Ready. Core Harvester pods should be running.

Optional: point your laptop kubectl at the kubeconfig you downloaded from Support, or build a Rancher-proxied kubeconfig (API key under the user avatar → Account & API Keys). Either path works for the rest of the lab.

Next: Exercise 2: The Subterranean Divide