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Rancher Version before 2.0

This procedure covers integrating Elastigroup with Rancher. Once completed Elastigroup will communicate with the Rancher primary to scale and manage the underlying cluster nodes.

Prerequisites​

Before you start using this integration, please make sure to have:

  • An active Spot account.
  • A Rancher account with 'rancher/server:v0.46.0-rc1' version or above.

Step 1: Create an API Key Within Rancher​

Rancher 1.2 or Later​

  1. Spot expects an Environment API Key (and not an Account API Key). Perform the following steps to create it.
  2. Store it in a secure location.

Rancher before 1.2​

  1. Login to Rancher UI.

  2. Choose API Keys from the drop-down menu on the top right corner.

  3. Create a new key and store it in a secure location.

  4. Navigate to the Infrastructure tab and click on Hosts.

  5. Add a new Host from the Custom Hosts type.

  6. Generate a command for registering a node.

  7. Follow the instructions and copy the host registration command.

Step 2: Modify the User Data​

  1. Use the registration command that was generated by Rancher. It should look something like:

    sudo docker run -d --privileged -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock rancher/agent:v0.8.2 http://rancher.spotinst.com/v1/scripts/1F68A2DE49C324F22ABE:1447257600000:v4W9vNzpG3GYr0mF6o4

  2. Add this flag to label your Rancher host:

    -e CATTLE_HOST_LABELS="spotinst.instanceId=`curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id`"

    Optionally, you can use the code below to add multiple tags to the host:

    #! /bin/bash
    sudo docker run -e CATTLE_HOST_LABELS="spotinst.instanceId=`curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id`&tagkey=name&tagkey2=names" -d --privileged -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock rancher/agent:v0.8.2 http://rancher.domain.com:8080/v1/scripts/[token]

    If you are using RancherOS, you should use the following cloud-init script:

    #cloud-config
    write_files:
      - path: /etc/rc.local
        permissions: "0755"
        owner: root
        content: |
          #!/bin/bash
          for i in {1..20}
          do
          docker info && break
          sleep 1
          done
          #Starting the Rancher Agent
          # Setting a CATTLE_HOST_LABELS of "spotinst.instanceId" which is REQUIRED for the Spot integration to work.
          sudo docker run -d -e CATTLE_HOST_LABELS="spotinst.instanceId=`wget -qO- http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id`" --privileged -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock rancher/agent:v0.8.2 http://rancher.domain.com:8080/v1/scripts/[token]

Step 3: Create an Elastigroup​

  1. Create a new Elastigroup. Insert the modified script (from the previous step) to the User Data section under the compute tab.
  2. If your Amazon Image does not contain docker, add a command for installing Docker.
  3. In the 3rd party section select Rancher and enter the following:
    1. Rancher primary – Your rancher url (e.g. http://myRancher.myDomain:8080/v1)
    2. Access Key & Secret key (which you just created in the previous step above -> in Step 1)
    3. When the instances are launched you should see that they are labeled with spotinst.instanceId:
tip

For security reasons, make sure that the Rancher Primary Security-Group is open specifically for the permit-listed Spot server IP addresses.

Whenever Spot performs an instance replacement, it will automatically communicate with Rancher API to:

  • Relocate the running containers to different hosts.
  • Delete and Purge the failed hosts.