What is the plan for managing host upgrades? When we up grade to new versions of the Rancher server, are the rancher agents automatically updated as well?
And then the question of backward compatibility comes to mind. How old it too old when it comes to the Docker engine running on the hosts?
Agents are automatically upgraded when rancher/server is. The Docker daemon itself is not managed so you upgrade it through your OS (RancherOS releases generally include the latest version, though we’re behind in getting 0.4 out).
Docker 1.6+ is currently required, if that changes (and it likely will for network drivers soon) it will be noted in the release notes.