/ansible-rancher-deployer

Ansible playbook for configuring a standalone rancher 2.X server on Ubuntu

ansible-rancher

Ansible playbook for securing, installing and upgrading a single node rancher 2.X server on Ubuntu.

This playbook is compatible with Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, 20.04 & 22.04.

This was tested on Hetzner Cloud and DigitalOcean but should work anywhere.

This script does the following:

  • installs python3 (needed for ansible)
  • secures ports with ufw
  • installs fail2ban (uses default config)
  • disables ssh password authentication
  • hardens networking with sysctl
  • installs docker 19.03 (or docker 23.0 on jammy)
  • starts a container with the image: rancher/rancher:stable

Requirements:

  • ansible
  • ssh-key for target server (password auth will be disabled)

The rancher data is persisted in /opt/rancher and remains across multiple runs.

Deploy Instructions

Copy hosts.sample to hosts and replace placeholders with your IP and (optional) domain.

cp hosts.sample hosts

If you need a specific version of rancher, change rancher_tag to the desired version.

If you will be using your providers firewall, uncomment the ufw role.

Run the following command to deploy

ansible-playbook -i hosts deploy.yml

Update Instructions

To update a rancher deploy created using this script, simply re-run the deploy command. It is highly recommended to backup your datastore (/opt/rancher) in case of any errors.

Important Notes

  • Leave domain as "unset" if you do not wish to register a letsencrypt certificate. (ideal for testing)
  • The ssl certificate is issued using letsencrypt so the usual ratelimits apply.
  • Re-running this script is potentially destructive. While your data persists in /opt/rancher the container will be recreated each run.

PR's welcome