Registries


With Rancher, you can add credentials to access private registries from DockerHub, Quay.io, or any address that you have a private registry. By having the ability to access your private registries, it enables Rancher to use your private images. In each environment, you can only use one credential per registry address. This makes it a simple request to launch images from private addresses. If you have added multiple credentials for the same address, Rancher will always use the most recently added one.

Rancher supports different registries for Cattle and Kubernetes container orchestration types.

Adding Registries

On the Infrastructure -> Registries page, click on Add Registry.

For all registries, you’ll need to provide the e-mail address, username, and password. For a Custom registry, you’ll need to also provide the registry address. Click on Create.

Note: For the Address in the custom registry, please do not pre-fix with http:// or https:// as we are expecting just the IP or Hostname.

If you add a credential for an address that already exists, Rancher will start using the new credentials.

Insecure Registries

In order to access an insecure registry, you’ll need to configure your Docker daemon on your host(s). DOMAIN and PORT are the domain and port where the private registry is hosted.

# Edit the config file "/etc/default/docker"
$ sudo vi /etc/default/docker
# Add this line at the end of file. If there are already options, make sure you append it to the current option list.
$ DOCKER_OPTS="$DOCKER_OPTS --insecure-registry=${DOMAIN}:${PORT}"
# Restart the docker service
$ sudo service docker restart

Self Signed Certificates

In order to use a self signed certificate with a registry, you’ll need to configure your Docker daemon on your host(s). DOMAIN and PORT are the domain and port where the private registry is hosted.

# Download the certificate from the domain
$ openssl s_client -showcerts -connect ${DOMAIN}:${PORT} </dev/null 2>/dev/null|openssl x509 -outform PEM >ca.crt
# Copy the certificate to the appropriate directories
$ sudo cp ca.crt /etc/docker/certs.d/${DOMAIN}/ca.crt
# Append the certificate to a file
$ cat ca.crt | sudo tee -a /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
# Restart the docker service to have the changes take affect
$ sudo service docker restart

Using Amazon’s ECR Registry

Using Amazon’s EC2 Container Registry with Rancher requires an extra configuration step. ECR uses AWS’s native authentication service, IAM, to manage access. AWS provides an API which allows a user to generate a temporary credential for Docker based on the rights of the IAM user making the request. Since the credential expires after 12 hours, a new credential needs to be created every 12 hours. You can use the AWS ECR Credential Updater to launch a service that will update the credential automatically. Please see the AWS ECR Credential Updater page for more information on how to configure it.

When specifying the image name in Rancher, use the fully qualified address AWS provides:

aws-account-number.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/my-repo:latest.

Using Google Container Registry

If you want to use Google Container Registry, you will have to use a service account JSON key file. Don’t forget to grant the correct permissions to the Google Cloud Storage bucket containing your Container Registry images.

Specify the registry address according to the region your images are stored. Use _json_key as username and use the full contents of the service account JSON key file as password.

Using Registries

As soon as the registry is created, you will be able to use these private registries when launching services and containers. The syntax for the image name is the same as what you would use for the docker run command.

[registry-name]/[namespace]/[imagename]:[version]

By default, we are assuming that you are trying to pull images from DockerHub.

Editing Registries

All options for a registry are accessible through the dropdown menu on the right hand side of the listed registry.

For any Active registry, you can Deactivate the registry, which would prohibit access to the registry. No new containers can be launched with any images in that registry.

For any Deactivated registry, you have two options. You can Activate the registry, which will allow containers to access images from those registries. Any members of your environment will be able to activate your credential without needing to re-input the password. If you don’t want anyone using your credential, you should Delete the registry, which will remove the credentials from the environment.

You can Edit any registry, which allows you to change the credentials to the registry address. You will not be able to change the registry address. The password is not saved in the “Edit” page, so you will need to re-input it in order to save any changes.

Note: If a registry is invalid (i.e. inactive, removed, or overridden due to a newer credential), any service using a private registry image will continue to run. Since the image has already been pulled onto the host, there will be no restrictions on usage of the image regardless of registry permissions. Therefore, any scaling up of services or additional containers using the image will be able to run. Rancher does not check if the credentials are still valid when running containers as we assume that you’ve already given the host permissions to access the image.

Changing the Default Registry

By default, Rancher automatically assumes any image without a registry prefix should be pulled from DockerHub. You can change the default registry from DockerHub to another registry by updating a setting in the API.

  1. Under Admin -> Setting -> Advanced Settings, click on the I understand that I can break things by changing advanced settings.
  2. Find the registry.default setting and click on the edit icon.
  3. Add the registry value and click on Save.

Once the registry.default setting has been updated, any images without a registry prefix (e.g. ubuntu:14.0.4) will be pulled from the default registry instead of DockerHub.

If you are using a private registry requiring credentials, you will need to add the registry to Rancher in order for the default registry to be valid.

Note: Any services in an existing environment will still be using the original default registry (e.g. DockerHub). For infrastructure stacks to start using the new default registry, it will need to be deleted and re-launched to start using the updated default registry. The stacks can be deployed from Catalog -> Library.

Limiting which Registries can be used

By default, any registry added into Rancher can be used to pull images. An admin of Rancher may want to limit which registries are approved. You can limit which registries are approved for pulling images by updating a setting in the API.

  1. Under Admin -> Setting -> Advanced Settings, click on the I understand that I can break things by changing advanced settings.
  2. Find the registry.whitelist setting and click on the edit icon.
  3. Add the list of registries that you want to whitelist. If there is more than one registry, the registries should be separated by commas.

Once the registry.whitelist setting has been updated, prior to pulling the image, the registry for the image will confirm that it is on the list of approved registries before it proceeds with pulling the image. If the registry is not on the approved list, then the image pull will fail.

Note: Once you add any registry to this value, DockerHub will automatically no longer be valid. To include DockerHub, you will need to add index.docker.io as one of the registries.

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