This guide demonstrates how to deploy a small EKS cluster with Rancher installed, using Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and Helm for application deployment.

Overview

Small EKS Cluster for Rancher

This configuration deploys a lightweight Amazon EKS cluster consisting of two c8g.xlarge nodes, the NGINX ingress controller, and Rancher as the Kubernetes management platform. This setup is ideal for development and testing environments.

Terraform Script

Infrastructure Provisioning

The following Terraform script provisions the EKS cluster:

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-west-2"
}

module "eks" {
  source          = "terraform-aws-modules/eks/aws"
  cluster_name    = "rancher-eks-small"
  cluster_version = "1.27"
  subnets         = ["subnet-abc123", "subnet-def456"] # Replace with your subnet IDs
  vpc_id          = "vpc-123456" # Replace with your VPC ID

  node_groups = {
    rancher = {
      desired_capacity = 2
      max_capacity     = 3
      min_capacity     = 2

      instance_type = "c8g.xlarge"
    }
  }
}

Ingress NGINX Deployment

Deploy the NGINX ingress controller using Helm:

Create the Namespace

resource "kubernetes_namespace" "ingress_nginx" {
  metadata {
    name = "ingress-nginx"
  }
}

Helm Chart Deployment

resource "helm_release" "nginx_ingress" {
  name       = "ingress-nginx"
  namespace  = kubernetes_namespace.ingress_nginx.metadata[0].name
  repository = "https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx"
  chart      = "ingress-nginx"
  version    = "4.10.1"

  set {
    name  = "controller.service.type"
    value = "LoadBalancer"
  }

  set {
    name  = "controller.service.annotations.service\.beta\.kubernetes\.io/aws-load-balancer-backend-protocol"
    value = "HTTP"
  }

  set {
    name  = "controller.service.annotations.service\.beta\.kubernetes\.io/aws-load-balancer-ssl-ports"
    value = "443"
  }

  set {
    name  = "controller.service.annotations.service\.beta\.kubernetes\.io/aws-load-balancer-ssl-cert"
    value = "arn:aws:acm:region:account-id:certificate/certificate-id" # Replace with your ACM cert ARN
  }
}

Rancher Deployment

Create the Namespace

resource "kubernetes_namespace" "cattle_system" {
  metadata {
    name = "cattle-system"
  }
}

Helm Chart Deployment

resource "helm_release" "rancher" {
  name       = "rancher"
  namespace  = kubernetes_namespace.cattle_system.metadata[0].name
  repository = "https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/latest"
  chart      = "rancher"
  version    = "2.7.0"

  set {
    name  = "hostname"
    value = "rancher.your-domain.com" # Replace with your hostname
  }

  set {
    name  = "ingress.tls.source"
    value = "letsEncrypt"
  }

  set {
    name  = "letsEncrypt.email"
    value = "admin@your-domain.com" # Replace with your email
  }

  set {
    name  = "letsEncrypt.environment"
    value = "production"
  }
}

Testing and Validation

Accessing Rancher

  1. Once the Helm installation is complete, verify the Rancher pods:

    kubectl get pods -n cattle-system

  2. Access Rancher via the hostname you specified:

    https://rancher.your-domain.com

Testing NGINX Ingress

Deploy a sample application and verify ingress access using the LoadBalancer endpoint.

References