Create & Import Your First Cluster Using kubectl

This section will guide you through creating your first cluster and importing it into Rancher Manager using kubectl.

Prerequisites

Rancher Manager cluster with Rancher Turtles installed
Cluster API providers installed for your scenario - we’ll be using the Docker infrastructure and RKE2 bootstrap/control plane providers in these instructions - see Initialization for common providers using Turtles' CAPIProvider
clusterctl CLI - see the releases

Create Your Cluster Definition

To generate the YAML for the cluster, do the following (assuming the Docker infrastructure provider is being used):

Open a terminal and run the following:

export CLUSTER_NAME=cluster1
export CONTROL_PLANE_MACHINE_COUNT=1
export WORKER_MACHINE_COUNT=1
export KUBERNETES_VERSION=v1.30.0

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-turtles-fleet-example/templates/docker-rke2.yaml | envsubst > cluster1.yaml

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.
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:

Label a namespace so all clusters contained in it are imported.
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 cluster1 cluster-api.cattle.io/rancher-auto-import=true