Demo Rancher - K8s Platform

Rancher is a complete software stack for teams to manage, deploy, and scale containers in production. It's built on Kubernetes and provides a streamlined interface for deploying, scaling, and managing Kubernetes clusters.

Here are the steps to deploy Rancher on a Linux machine:

Step 1: Provisioning a Linux Host

The requirements for the Linux Host are as follows: Any modern Linux distribution. Ubuntu 18.04 is commonly used for this purpose.

• A minimum of 4GB RAM.
• A minimum of 2 CPUs.

Step 2: Install Docker

You can install Docker on your Linux machine by following the official Docker installation documentation for your respective Linux distribution.

For Ubuntu, you can install Docker using the following commands:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add - sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install docker-ce

To verify that Docker is installed correctly, run the following command

sudo docker run hello-world

Step 3: Install Rancher

Run the following Docker command to install Rancher

sudo docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped -p 80:80 -p 443:443 --privileged rancher/rancher:latest

This will pull the latest Rancher server Docker image and start a container.

Step 4: Access Rancher

Rancher operates an HTTPS server on port 443 and HTTP on port 80 of the host machine. You can connect to Rancher using a web browser at the host's IP address or DNS name.

Step 5: Set the Admin Password and URL

The first time you access Rancher, you'll be prompted to set a password for the admin user, and then confirm the server URL.

Step 6: Creating a Kubernetes Cluster

From the Global view, navigate to Clusters and click on "Add Cluster". You will have a list of options to choose from for where to deploy your Kubernetes cluster. It could be on existing nodes, an infrastructure provider, or hosted Kubernetes providers.

After the selection, just follow the respective on-screen instructions to proceed with the cluster creation.

Step 7: Deploying Workloads

Once your cluster is active, you can start deploying workloads. This can be done from the 'Default' project within your cluster.

These steps should allow you to deploy Rancher on a Linux machine and manage other Kubernetes clusters. Note that Rancher's flexibility allows for many other configurations, which may vary based on your specific requirements.

Installing Brew in Mac

Homebrew is a free and open-source package manager for macOS that simplifies the process of installing, updating, and managing software packages on your Mac. It allows you to easily install and manage a wide range of software packages, libraries, and tools that are not included in macOS by default.

Homebrew uses a command-line interface to install packages and dependencies, which means that you can easily manage and customize your software installations using simple commands in the Terminal.

Some of the benefits of using Homebrew on your Mac include:

• Easy installation of software packages and dependencies
• Automatic updates of installed packages
• Uninstallation of packages and dependencies
• Ability to customize software installations with different options and versions
• Access to a large and active community of developers who contribute to Homebrew's package repository

Following are commands to install the brew and add it to CLI.

xcode-select --install

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)" 

Following will be at the end of the installation, Copy and run that in the Mac CLI. 
  (echo; echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"') >> /Users/<Username>/.zprofile\n    eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

xcode-select --install is a command that installs the command-line tools for Xcode on your Mac. Xcode is a development environment for macOS that provides tools for developing software for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. The command-line tools for Xcode include a variety of tools and libraries that are necessary for building and compiling software on your Mac, even if you are not using Xcode itself.
Running xcode-select --install will open a dialog box that prompts you to install the command-line tools for Xcode. This may take a few minutes to complete, depending on your internet connection speed.

The command /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)" installs Homebrew on your Mac. Homebrew is a package manager that allows you to easily install and manage software packages and libraries on your Mac.
The installation script for Homebrew will download and install the necessary files and dependencies for Homebrew, and will configure your system to use Homebrew as your default package manager.

The last command (echo; echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"') >> /Users/<Username>/.zprofile\n eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)" adds the necessary configuration to your .zprofile file to ensure that Homebrew is properly configured on your system. This command adds a line to your .zprofile file that tells your terminal to evaluate the output of the brew shellenv command, which sets up your environment variables to use Homebrew. This ensures that when you open a new terminal session, your system is properly configured to use Homebrew.

Troubleshooting Ansible and VMware: Resolving 'Failed to import PyVmomi library' Error

When working with Ansible and VMware, you may encounter an error message similar to the following:

msg: Failed to import the required Python library (PyVmomi) on <hostname>'s Python <path/to/python>. Please read the module documentation and install it in the appropriate location. If the required library is installed, but Ansible is using the wrong Python interpreter, please consult the documentation on ansible_python_interpreter.

This error message indicates that Ansible is unable to import the required Python library PyVmomi when running a playbook. This library is required to interact with VMware virtualization products.

To resolve this issue, you should first ensure that the PyVmomi library is installed in the appropriate location. You can use pip to install the library:

pip install pyvmomi

Next, you should verify that Ansible is using the correct version of Python and pip. The error message may indicate that Ansible is using the wrong Python interpreter or version of pip. You can check which version of Python Ansible is using by running the ansible --version command and looking for the ansible_python_interpreter line in the output. If the interpreter is incorrect, you can set the correct interpreter path using the ansible_python_interpreter variable in your playbook or in your inventory file.
It's also important to ensure that you are using the correct version of pip to install packages. If you have multiple versions of Python installed, you may also have multiple versions of pip. You can check the version of pip you are using with the pip --version command. If you are using the wrong version of pip, you can switch to the correct version using the appropriate command for your operating system.

If the issue persists, you may need to uninstall any conflicting libraries or packages, such as pyvim, and try reinstalling PyVmomi to ensure that there are no conflicts or version mismatches.

By following these steps, you can resolve the Failed to import the required Python library error message and ensure that Ansible is using the correct Python interpreter and version of pip for installing packages.