Overview

Rancher is a complete container management platform that lets you deploy and run clusters on any provider. Rancher lets you deploy and manage custom Kubernetes clusters with a wide range of features that simplify the deployment, orchestration, and scaling of containerized applications. With Rancher, users can easily manage multiple Kubernetes clusters across different cloud providers. Rancher provides centralized authentication, role-based access control (RBAC), and monitoring capabilities. This makes it easier to collaborate and manage containerized applications.

Rancher Kubernetes Engine 2 (RKE2), is a lightweight Kubernetes distribution that is specifically designed for security and compliance. RKE2 builds upon RKE and offers additional enhancements for improved performance and security. RKE2 is Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) certified and offers Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 14-2 compliance. RKE2 leverages containerd as the container runtime, reducing resource overhead and improving performance. RKE2 also supports high availability (HA) deployments to ensure reliability and application redundancy.

Rancher and RKE2 provide a robust range of features for managing and deploying Kubernetes clusters. Rancher's interface makes it easy to manage multiple RKE2 clusters, whether they are located in the cloud, on-premises, or at the edge. RKE2's lightweight design and high availability capabilities makes it an ideal choice for deploying Kubernetes in a range of environments.

Environments running a Rancher RKE2 cluster with CN2 as the CNI benefit from a feature-rich CNI platform with advanced capabilities. CN2 offers features like network segmentation and isolation, seamless pod-to-pod connectivity within the cluster, and multi-tenancy. By deploying CN2 as the CNI of your Rancher RKE2 cluster, you can leverage the benefits of both platforms.

Due to the flexibility of both CN2 and RKE2, installing an RKE2 cluster with CN2 as the CNI is relatively straightforward. The Rancher installation process is streamlined and requires minimal configuration. After your RKE2 cluster is up, install CN2 by applying the CN2 manifests.