Create & import a cluster using CAPI providers

This guide goes over the process of creating and importing CAPI clusters with a selection of the officially supported providers.

Remember that most Cluster API Providers are upstream projects maintained by the Kubernetes open-source community.

Prerequisites

AWS Kubeadm

• Rancher Manager cluster with Rancher Turtles installed
• Cluster API Providers: you can find a guide on how to install a provider using the CAPIProvider resource here
  • Infrastructure provider for AWS
  • Bootstrap/Control Plane provider for Kubeadm
• clusterctl CLI - see install clusterctl from CAPI book

Docker Kubeadm

• Rancher Manager cluster with Rancher Turtles installed
• Cluster API Providers: you can find a guide on how to install a provider using the CAPIProvider resource here
  • Infrastructure provider for Docker
  • Bootstrap/Control Plane provider for Kubeadm
• clusterctl CLI - see install clusterctl from CAPI book

Create Your Cluster Definition

AWS Kubeadm

To generate the YAML for the cluster, do the following:

1. Open a terminal and run the following:

export KUBERNETES_VERSION=v1.28
export AWS_REGION=eu-west-2
export AWS_INSTANCE_TYPE=t3.medium

clusterctl generate cluster cluster1 \
--from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-turtles-fleet-example/templates/capa.yaml \
> cluster1.yaml

2. View cluster1.yaml to ensure there are no tokens (i.e. SSH keys or cloud credentials). You can make any changes you want as well.

The Cluster API quickstart guide contains more detail. Read the steps related to this section here.

3. Create the cluster using kubectl

kubectl create -f cluster1.yaml

Docker Kubeadm

To generate the YAML for the cluster, do the following:

1. Open a terminal and run the following:

export CONTROL_PLANE_MACHINE_COUNT=1
export WORKER_MACHINE_COUNT=1
export KUBERNETES_VERSION=v1.26.4

clusterctl generate cluster cluster1 \
--from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-turtles-fleet-example/templates/docker-kubeadm.yaml \
> cluster1.yaml

2. View cluster1.yaml to ensure there are no tokens. You can make any changes you want as well.

The Cluster API quickstart guide contains more detail. Read the steps related to this section here.

3. Create the cluster using kubectl

kubectl create -f cluster1.yaml

Mark Namespace or Cluster for Auto-Import

To automatically import a CAPI cluster into Rancher Manager, there are 2 options:

1. Label a namespace so all clusters contained in it are imported.
2. Label an individual cluster definition so that it's imported.

Labeling a namespace:

kubectl label namespace default cluster-api.cattle.io/rancher-auto-import=true

Labeling an individual cluster definition:

kubectl label cluster.cluster.x-k8s.io -n default cluster1 cluster-api.cattle.io/rancher-auto-import=true