End-to-End Kubernetes with Rancher, RKE2, K3s, Fleet, Longhorn, and NeuVector

Imported Clusters (Non-RKE2 Self-Hosted Clusters)

Rancher offers a wide range of features and functionalities to manage imported clusters; however, there are some limitations to be aware of, especially if these clusters are not RKE2 clusters. In this section, we will discuss the non-RKE2 clusters.

You can access and manage clusters using kubectl and kubeconfig files, handle cluster membership, manage nodes, and oversee persistent volumes, storage classes, projects, namespaces, and workloads. Additionally, tools like alerts, monitoring, logging, and Istio configuration, as well as security scans (Rancher CIS Benchmark), are fully supported for imported clusters. Other features like the App Catalog and security scans are also available. These features help to manage and integrate imported clusters into Rancher’s centralized interface.

However, there are certain limitations. Imported clusters do not support certificate rotation or Rancher's native backup and restore functionality.

ℹ️ Certificate rotation is a security best practice that involves replacing certificates before they expire. This helps in preventing unauthorized access to the cluster. We are referring to the certificates used by Rancher to communicate with different components of the cluster (e.g., etcd, kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler, and kubelet).