RKE2 Cluster Installation With Ansible

RKE2 is Rancher’s enterprise-ready next-generation Kubernetes distribution.It delivers upstream‑compatible Kubernetes with built‑in security hardening, compliance‑friendly by defaults, and a simple operational model that scales cleanly from data center to edge.

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Pre-requisits

• 6 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on all nodes [ 3 servers and 3 agent nodes]
• Ansible controller node

Set hostname on all the nodes using hostnamectl set-hostaname command

hostnamectl set-hostname master-01
hostnamectl set-hostname master-02

Update /etc/hosts file

192.168.122.101 master-01
192.168.122.102 master-02
192.168.122.103 master-03
192.168.122.201 worker-01
192.168.122.202 worker-02
192.168.122.203 worker-03

Install ansible

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ansible -y

Set up passwordless SSH

Generate ssh key

ssh-keygen

Copy ssh keys to master and worker nodes

{
declare -a NODES=(192.168.122.101 192.168.122.102 192.168.122.103 192.168.122.201 192.168.122.202 192.168.122.203)

for node in ${NODES[@]}; do
  ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 root@$node
done
}

Install the RKE2 deployment role

ansible-galaxy install lablabs.rke2

Navigate to the ~/.ansible directory

cd ~/.ansible

Create inventory file in ~/.ansible

vim inventory

[masters]
master-01 ansible_host=192.168.122.101 rke2_type=server
master-02 ansible_host=192.168.122.102 rke2_type=server
master-03 ansible_host=192.168.122.103 rke2_type=server

[workers]
worker-01 ansible_host=192.168.122.201 rke2_type=agent
worker-02 ansible_host=192.168.122.202 rke2_type=agent
worker-03 ansible_host=192.168.122.203 rke2_type=agent

[k8s_cluster:children]
masters
workers

[all:vars]
ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3
ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/root/.ssh/id_ed25519
ansible_user=root

Create playbook.yaml file in ~/.ansible

- name: Deploy RKE2
  hosts: all
  become: yes
  vars:
    rke2_ha_mode: true
    rke2_api_ip : 192.168.122.100
    rke2_download_kubeconf: true
    #rke2_ha_mode_keepalived: false
    rke2_server_node_taints:
      - 'CriticalAddonsOnly=true:NoExecute'
  roles:
    - role: lablabs.rke2

Confirm inventory is working

ansible all -i inventory -m ping

ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook.yaml

If you’re ssh’ing to the other machines as a non-root user, run the following instead:

ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook.yaml -K

Manage our cluster with kubectl –kubeconfig ~/rke2.yaml, or we can do the following to shorten our commands:

export KUBECONFIG=~/rke2.yaml

Confirm our cluster is running and with correct internal IP addresses

kubectl get nodes -o wide

Check the health of our pods

kubectl get pods -A

🔗 Reference Links:

• lablabs/rke2 ansible role

• rke2 docs