RKE2

We're starting to experiment with our next-generation Kuberenets distribution. This is currently an alpha project that will evolve a lot. Stay tuned.

What is this?

RKE2 is a fully compliant Kubernetes distribution, with the following changes:

• Packaged as a single binary.
• Kubelet running as an embedded process in the agent and server.
• Master components running as static pods.
• All components images are compiled using Goboring library.
• The following addons are installed as helm charts:
  • CoreDNS
  • Kube-proxy
  • Canal
  • Nginx Ingress Controller
  • Metrics Server

Quick Start

The install.sh script provides a convenient way for installing rke2 server and agent, to install rke2 service:

INSTALL_RKE2_VERSION=v0.0.1-alpha.4 ./install.sh

A kubeconfig is written to /etc/rancher/rke2/rke2.yaml, the install script will install rke2 and additional binaries such as kubectl, ctr, rke2-uninstall.sh.

To start using the rke2 cluster:

export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/rke2/rke2.yaml
kubectl get nodes

RKE2_TOKEN is created at /var/lib/rancher/rke2/server/node-token on your server. To install on worker nodes we should pass RKE2_URL along with RKE2_TOKEN or RKE2_CLUSTER_SECRET environment variables, for example:

RKE2_URL=https://myserver:6443 RKE2_TOKEN=XXX ./install.sh

Automated deployment

We provide a simple automated way to install RKE2 on AWS via terraform scripts, this method requires terraform to be installed and access to AWS cloud, to get started please checkout the rke2-build repo.