Rancher and OVHcloud: simplifying the management of your Managed Kubernetes clusters

Introduction

As part of the new season of OVHcloud’s Twitch channel, Rémy (Tech Evangelist) invited Charbel Harb (Containerisation Sales Specialist) to demystify Rancher, the Kubernetes cluster management platform. During their conversation, they discussed the multicloud advantages of the solution, usage modes and features, as well as potential future developments. This article summarises the key points of their discussion to help you understand how Rancher can lighten the operational load of your Kubernetes environments.

Rancher does not replace Managed Kubernetes; it overlays it

Rancher functions as a Kubernetes cluster management platform: it is installed as a layer on top of your clusters, whether they are hosted with OVHcloud, on bare metal, or with another provider. It does not replace Kubernetes; it complements the solution by providing a graphical interface that replicates actions usually performed in command lines.

“Rancher is a complete multicloud Managed Kubernetes cluster management platform. It does not replace Kubernetes – it’s an overlay.”

OVHcloud focuses on technological freedom and open source. After testing several solutions, Rancher was selected for its agnostic nature and lack of vendor lock-in. Its partnership with SUSE, a European publisher sharing the same sovereignty principles, has led to the launch of a “vanilla” version of Rancher, enriched with some interface adjustments for deploying clusters with OVHcloud.

Multicloud management and deployment flexibility

Rancher offers a single dashboard for both local and remote clusters. It centralises the management of clusters hosted on:

• OVHcloud Managed Kubernetes Service
• Public Cloud or Private Cloud instances self-managed by the client
• Other cloud providers offering a Managed Kubernetes Service

The interface lists all clusters, regardless of their location, as long as they have a public outbound IP address.

Rancher offers two entry points that are easily identifiable:

• Create a new cluster from one of the supported environments (choice of zone, number of AZs, type of nodes, enabling autoscaling)
• import an existing cluster by deploying a small Rancher agent via a kubectl command.

This duality ensures that every member of a DevOps team works in a way that’s comfortable for them, while retaining the ability to automate tasks via scripts.

User experience: GUI vs CLI

Rancher caters to both profiles:

• users who prefer clicking: creating clusters, sizing node pools, and deploying applications can be done in a few clicks, without memorising long kubectl syntaxes.
• experts who prefer the power of the terminal: the interface includes a kubectl terminal that allows commands be directly executed on the cluster, even from a bastion or a computer without local installation.

This duality ensures that every member of a DevOps team works in a way that’s comfortable for them, while retaining the ability to automate tasks via scripts.

Integrated application catalogue: monitoring, observability and security

Rancher includes a catalogue of applications (Helm charts),  including Prometheus and Grafana, that are pre-installed and free. 

In just a few clicks, you can add a monitoring layer to your cluster and immediately visualise metrics like CPU, RAM, network load and logs.

“The application catalogue is a toolbox that solves many issues.”

These tools facilitate quick debugging and provide enough visibility to initiate finops actions (scale-up/scale-down, resource optimisation) even though Rancher is not a financial management product.

Security and access control

Rancher integrates complete role-based access control (RBAC).
You can create user groups, assign them predefined roles (read, write, administration), and link them to external authentication providers such as LDAP or SSO. This granularity prevents human errors and strengthens compliance with internal policies.

Internal architecture: the brain and the agent

Rancher Manager operates within its own dedicated Kubernetes cluster, shared for all OVHcloud customers. Each managed cluster has a Rancher agent that receives instructions from the administration console. During creation, this console automatically deploys the agent. During import, the user executes the provided command to install the agent. This architecture ensures reliable communication while maintaining the isolation of client workloads.

Roadmap and development perspectives

The product is currently stable, and several areas for improvement are underway:

• support for “private” mode (clusters without public IPs) to meet the requirements of isolated networks
• integration of AI assistants to generate prompts for creating clusters or managing users, further reducing the number of clicks required.

These developments align with our goal of offering an increasingly smooth and automated experience for DevOps teams.

Conclusion

Rancher positions itself as a versatile tool for Kubernetes management: it centralises multicloud clusters, offers an intuitive graphical interface, integrates a catalogue of ready-to-use applications, and ensures granular security via RBAC.

“The first piece of advice is really to try it. Give yourself some time to measure the gain.”

If you’d like to test this solution, we are currently offering a free trial of the Managed Rancher service. Start a test cluster, explore the application catalogue, and measure how much time you save in your DevOps processes.

Over to you! Contact our team, schedule a personalised demonstration session, and discover how Rancher can transform the management of your Kubernetes environments.