Detailed install directions for ISO?

RancherOS
1

Hi there,

new to Rancher and RancherOS and I’m finding the documentation really lacking for someone who isn’t a seasoned pro.

For example, I’m trying to install on ESXi and the instructions here, https://rancher.com/docs/os/v1.x/en/installation/running-rancheros/workstation/boot-from-iso/, only specify the amount of RAM to use. What about the guest OS type? What about an example of the install screen expected and the steps to follow?

What I’m seeing is that the ISO seems to fail to boot and I just get to some boot manager that doesn’t respond. I can’t tell if that’s a Rancher thing or an ESXi thing.

I then tried to use the VMDK image but this fails with a error that the VM can’t power on because the disk is of the wrong type. Again, there are no instructions on the flow or what to expect.

Anyone know of any tutorials or videos that show the expected boot from ISO steps?

Cheers.

2

Typical, I post this and then try on a different machine and it boots with no issues.

So what could cause the ISO to fail to boot? Are there specific CPU feature requirements? The working machine is a Xeon E3-1220 while the failing one is an i3-4150. Both have new installations of esxi 6.7 u3. Both CPUs have VT-x.

It’s all old hardware but I may be missing something?

3

Not the answer to your question but seems that RancherOS has no future. You should look at k3sOS instead.

4

Can you link to an announcement?

5

No link but this is what you get from everyone when you check Slack threads. The officiel EOL of the current version is June 2021 according to this site, and EOM October 2020.

https://rancher.com/support-maintenance-terms/

6

@Torpi,

I think that it would be damageable for the firm has having the hand on the OS level give them more legitimacy about there technology.

I’m using it, and feeling fine with it under my rancher plateform running on top of RancherOS.

7

Not sure I read you correctly are you saying that stopping RancherOS would reduce their legitimacy because they will not control the whole ecosystem (OS, and Orchestration management)? I guess this is why k3Os is here as well as k3s. The focus seems more towards edge computing rather than a tool for cloud k8s clusters.

I think RancherOS is really great and I would definitely use it for my nodes. I am just afraid of its future. This is why I asked the question on their Slack channel and got the feedback mentioned above.

Alternatives I am considering are Fedora CoreOS (nota: CoreOS is end of life since Redhat aquired it and this is replaced by Fedora CoreOS), Ubuntu Core (uses Snap, a bit different but still interesting concept), Minimal-Ubuntu (very different concept but keep the attack surface low and reduce the number of updates/maintenance)

Keep in mind that there are also limitations with RancherOS or k3Os. Ex.: it’s very difficult (say, impossible for some OS) to set up iSCSI or NFS volumes since you cannot install the plugin required on the OS. People have worked around it with scripts and some OS offer features but still, you might hit some limitations.

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