Continental Innovates with Rancher and Kubernetes
This section describes how to choose a Rancher version.
For a high-availability installation of Rancher, which is recommended for production, the Rancher server is installed using a Helm chart on a Kubernetes cluster. Refer to the Helm version requirements to choose a version of Helm to install Rancher.
For Docker installations of Rancher, which is used for development and testing, you will install Rancher as a Docker image.
The Helm chart version also applies to RancherD installs because RancherD installs the Rancher Helm chart on a Kubernetes cluster.
When installing, upgrading, or rolling back Rancher Server when it is installed on a Kubernetes cluster, Rancher server is installed using a Helm chart on a Kubernetes cluster. Therefore, as you prepare to install or upgrade a high availability Rancher configuration, you must add a Helm chart repository that contains the charts for installing Rancher.
Refer to the Helm version requirements to choose a version of Helm to install Rancher.
Rancher provides several different Helm chart repositories to choose from. We align our latest and stable Helm chart repositories with the Docker tags that are used for a Docker installation. Therefore, the rancher-latest repository will contain charts for all the Rancher versions that have been tagged as rancher/rancher:latest. When a Rancher version has been promoted to the rancher/rancher:stable, it will get added to the rancher-stable repository.
rancher-latest
rancher/rancher:latest
rancher/rancher:stable
rancher-stable
helm repo add rancher-latest https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/latest
helm repo add rancher-stable https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/stable
helm repo add rancher-alpha https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/alpha
Instructions on when to select these repos are available below in Switching to a Different Helm Chart Repository.
Note: The introduction of the rancher-latest and rancher-stable Helm Chart repositories was introduced after Rancher v2.1.0, so the rancher-stable repository contains some Rancher versions that were never marked as rancher/rancher:stable. The versions of Rancher that were tagged as rancher/rancher:stable prior to v2.1.0 are v2.0.4, v2.0.6, v2.0.8. Post v2.1.0, all charts in the rancher-stable repository will correspond with any Rancher version tagged as stable.
stable
Rancher Helm chart versions match the Rancher version (i.e appVersion). Once you’ve added the repo you can search it to show available versions with the following command: helm search repo --versions
appVersion
helm search repo --versions
If you have several repos you can specify the repo name, ie. helm search repo rancher-stable/rancher --versions For more information, see https://helm.sh/docs/helm/helm_search_repo/
helm search repo rancher-stable/rancher --versions
To fetch a specific version of your chosen repo, define the --version parameter like in the following example: helm fetch rancher-stable/rancher --version=2.4.8
--version
helm fetch rancher-stable/rancher --version=2.4.8
For the Rancher v2.1.x versions, there were some Helm charts where the version was a build number, i.e. yyyy.mm.<build-number>. These charts have been replaced with the equivalent Rancher version and are no longer available.
yyyy.mm.<build-number>
After installing Rancher, if you want to change which Helm chart repository to install Rancher from, you will need to follow these steps.
Note: Because the rancher-alpha repository contains only alpha charts, switching between the rancher-alpha repository and the rancher-stable or rancher-latest repository for upgrades is not supported.
Latest: Recommended for trying out the newest features
Stable: Recommended for production environments
Alpha: Experimental preview of upcoming releases. Note: Upgrades are not supported to, from, or between Alphas.
List the current Helm chart repositories.
helm repo list NAME URL stable https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com rancher-<CHART_REPO> https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/<CHART_REPO>
Remove the existing Helm Chart repository that contains your charts to install Rancher, which will either be rancher-stable or rancher-latest depending on what you had initially added.
helm repo remove rancher-<CHART_REPO>
Add the Helm chart repository that you want to start installing Rancher from.
helm repo add rancher-<CHART_REPO> https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/<CHART_REPO>
Continue to follow the steps to upgrade Rancher from the new Helm chart repository.
When performing Docker installs, upgrades, or rollbacks, you can use tags to install a specific version of Rancher.
Rancher Server is distributed as a Docker image, which have tags attached to them. You can specify this tag when entering the command to deploy Rancher. Remember that if you use a tag without an explicit version (like latest or stable), you must explicitly pull a new version of that image tag. Otherwise, any image cached on the host will be used.
latest
rancher/rancher:<v2.X.X>
Notes: The master tag or any tag with -rc or another suffix is meant for the Rancher testing team to validate. You should not use these tags, as these builds are not officially supported. Want to install an alpha review for preview? Install using one of the alpha tags listed on our announcements page (e.g., v2.2.0-alpha1). Caveat: Alpha releases cannot be upgraded to or from any other release.
Notes:
master
-rc
v2.2.0-alpha1