Rancher

Rancher is a Kubernetes management tool to deploy and run clusters anywhere and on any provider.

Rancher can provision Kubernetes from a hosted provider, provision compute nodes and then install Kubernetes onto them, or import existing Kubernetes clusters running anywhere.

Rancher adds significant value on top of Kubernetes, first by centralizing authentication and role-based access control (RBAC) for all of the clusters, giving global admins the ability to control cluster access from one location.

It then enables detailed monitoring and alerting for clusters and their resources, ships logs to external providers, and integrates directly with Helm via the Application Catalog. If you have an external CI/CD system, you can plug it into Rancher, but if you don't, Rancher even includes Fleet to help you automatically deploy and upgrade workloads.

Rancher is a complete container management platform for Kubernetes, giving you the tools to successfully run Kubernetes anywhere.

https://ranchermanager.docs.rancher.com/

• The Rancher server manages and provisions Kubernetes clusters. You can interact with downstream Kubernetes clusters through the Rancher server's user interface. The Rancher management server can be installed on any Kubernetes cluster, including hosted clusters, such as Amazon EKS clusters. • RKE (Rancher Kubernetes Engine) is a certified Kubernetes distribution and CLI/library which creates and manages a Kubernetes cluster. • K3s (Lightweight Kubernetes) is also a fully compliant Kubernetes distribution. It is newer than RKE, easier to use, and more lightweight, with a binary size of less than 100 MB. • RKE2 is a fully conformant Kubernetes distribution that focuses on security and compliance within the U.S. Federal Government sector.

Rancher Install