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Lab overview: infrastructure and deploy pipeline

What rodeo-cli builds for this workshop, and what each deploy phase does. Same topology as suse-virt-rodeo; here you bring it up yourself with rodeo up.

Lab topology

Everything runs on one bare-metal Linux host as nested KVM VMs on the libvirt NAT network virbr0 (192.168.122.0/24). The host DNATs ports 8443 and 30002 so both UIs are reachable from outside.

flowchart TB
    subgraph HOST["  Bare-metal KVM host  ·  192.168.122.1  "]
        direction TB

        subgraph HV["  Harvester cluster  ·  VIP 192.168.122.10  "]
            direction LR
            H1["harvester1  .11\n8 vCPU / 16 GiB / 320 GB\nbootstrap"]
            H2["harvester2  .12\n8 vCPU / 16 GiB / 320 GB\njoin"]
            H3["harvester3  .13\n8 vCPU / 16 GiB / 320 GB\njoin"]
        end

        subgraph RANCHER["  rancher  ·  192.168.122.9  ·  4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 60 GB  "]
            R1["K3s v1.35.3+k3s1"]
            R2["Rancher Prime 2.14.1"]
            R3["cert-manager v1.20.1"]
        end

        DNAT["DNAT  :8443 → VIP:443\n:30002 → rancher:30002"]
    end

    DNAT --> HV
    DNAT --> RANCHER

Virtual machines

VM IP vCPU RAM Disk Role
harvester1 192.168.122.11 8 16 GiB 320 GB Bootstrap / cluster-init
harvester2 192.168.122.12 8 16 GiB 320 GB Join node
harvester3 192.168.122.13 8 16 GiB 320 GB Join node
rancher 192.168.122.9 4 8 GiB 60 GB K3s + Rancher Prime

VIP (kube-vip): 192.168.122.10, floating, not a node IP.

Harvester installs via iPXE UEFI network boot: empty disk → DHCP → ipxe.efi (TFTP) → per-node HTTP script → kernel + initrd + squashfs → unattended install. This is the same mechanism the customer Rodeo image was built with.

The deploy pipeline

rodeo up (or rodeo deploy) runs six phases. Each is idempotent; resume with rodeo deploy --from PHASE.

flowchart LR
    P1["1\nkvm_host"] --> P2["2\nvms"] --> P3["3\npxe_server"] --> P4["4\ncluster"] --> P5["5\nrancher"] --> P6["6\nfinalise"]

Phase 1: kvm_host (~5 min)

KVM packages, libvirt, firewall + DNAT (:8443 → VIP, :30002 → Rancher), storage pool, sysctls.

Phase 2: vms (~10 min)

Downloads the Harvester ISO and Rancher base image, creates disks and UEFI vars, writes libvirt domain XML. VMs are defined but not started.

Phase 3: pxe_server (~3 min)

nginx + TFTP + dnsmasq on virbr0. Per-node iPXE scripts and Harvester config YAML for unattended install.

Phase 4: cluster (30-90 min, the long pole)

Starts VMs in order (harvester1 first, etcd join gap, then the rest). Waits for VIP and all three nodes Ready. Nested KVM makes this slow; that is expected.

Phase 5: rancher (~15 min)

K3s + cert-manager + Rancher Prime on the rancher VM (NodePort 30002). harvester_auto_import: false - students import in Exercise 1.

Phase 6: finalise (~1 min)

Enables VM autostart and libvirt-guests.service, prints URLs and credentials.

What exists when deploy finishes

Resource Created by
libvirt NAT 192.168.122.0/24 vms
harvester1/2/3 Ready, VIP up cluster
Rancher Prime on :30002 rancher
DNAT :8443 / :30002 kvm_host
Credentials in ~/.rodeo/secrets.yaml rodeo up / init
Harvester not listed in Rancher Virtualization Management by design

Everything else (namespaces, VM networks, images, SSH keys, guest VMs) is built by students across Exercises 1-8. That differs from the Instruqt Rodeo image, which bakes some of those foundations in; this workshop has you create them so the path is complete on a clean host.

How this maps to suse-virt-rodeo

Rodeo chapter This workshop
1 The Arrival Exercise 1 (+ import, which the image often already has)
2 Subterranean Divide Exercise 2 (+ create prod/service, SSH key, image)
3 Flash Crash Exercise 3
4 Rising Tide Exercise 4
5 Invisible Intruder Exercise 5
6 Unthinkable Error Exercise 6
7 Stampede Exercise 7
8 Final Showdown Exercise 8 (ISAware source is simulated on bare metal)
9 New Horizon Exercise 9