Deploy RancherOS on VMware ESXi VM

RancherOS
1

Hi all,
I’m deploying RancherOS on VMs in my VMware vCenter environment with netboot.xyz - which was recommended to me via a Rancher Employee on Slack. However, I’ve built 6 nodes with 1 actually being successful in functioning properly (aka it boots without errors and installs VMware tools) however, the other 5 nodes that I’ve setup all present me with this error:

RacherOSerror
RacherOSerror1434×612 13.4 KB

And it appears that VMware tools never gets installed. I can SSH into the host, ping and lookup domains and even resolve 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. I’ve added exceptions on my firewalls to whitelist and docker and rancher domains. Anyone else seeing this issue? Is RancherOS the right choice? I’m open to using something like Ubuntu but seems slightly bloated but maybe better supported? Thoughts?

2

We recommend using rancheros-vmware.iso on vmware hypersior which built-in open-vm-tools.

3

I was using that, but the install would error out when using the following command:

sudo ros install -c cloud-config.yml -d /dev/sda

It would fail to install the OS and put it in a read only state. Had to reboot the VM in order to do anything.

4

By default rancheros-vmware.iso has already been auto-format. If you want use noformat iso you can build from master using the command VMWARE_AUTOFORMAT=0 make vmware

5

Hmm Ok. I’ll give it a shot and let you know.

6

Ok I’m not sure I follow. I’ve created a new VM and booted up. But if I shutdown, remove the iso from the VM, it doesn’t ‘install’.

7

When trying to run the sudo ros install -d /dev/sda command I get the following error.

CNX-RancherOS-N4%202018-12-11%2013-05-48
CNX-RancherOS-N4%202018-12-11%2013-05-48705×338 5.72 KB

8

So is the point to not install rancheros-vmware.iso to disk, but simply run it from the iso with persistent data being written to the drive? I found this: https://github.com/rancher/os/issues/2369 which seems to indicate this is the case?

9

Sorry my mistake. rancheros-vmware.iso is autoformat if you want install to disk, you need to use VMWARE_AUTOFORMAT=0 make vmware

10

yeah we saw that and had no clue so used the generic ISO. I think I got this advice from support. Seemed to work out fine, ignoring the other traps and pitfalls.

11

Might be a dumb question but how can I tell if my Rancher OS v1.4.1 is/has already been installed to disk and not run from ISO?

Is there a command to check/show that this is running from ISO or from disk? :slight_smile: