Introduction
In the previous posts we’ve been using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates for deploying our nodes. Today we’ll be using the same method to deploy a Rancher Server.
Be aware that this is to be used for demo / labo / source-for-inspiration, and not for production usage! Azure has a strict policy that server that are not setup in a redundant manner will not benefit from Service Level Agreements. So you definitely need a “High Availability” setup for that.
ARM Templates on my BitBucket repository
Browse to https://bitbucket.org/kvaes/azure-rancher
Check out the source code so you know the content is to be trusted and/or understand what is happening. For the quickstart, just press the “Deploy to Azure” link…
Using the ARM Template
So you clicked the “Deploy to Azure” link and you’re now inside Azure. Enter the details… (just like in the previous post).
And press “Create”. Now wait for about 10 minutes…At that time you’ll have a notification that your deployment succeeded. Your host will be reachable via the following dns name ;
[hostname].[region].cloudapp.azure.com:8080/
So let’s browse to it… Cool!
Be sure to go to “admin” and then “acces control” to make sure you to secure your environment.
Look.. That wasn’t that hard to deploy, or was it? 🙂
Adding your nodes
Just follow the directives of the previous posts …
Be sure to set your host settings url correctly.
And to generate your API url
TL;DR
- Deploying Rancher on Azure can be done within minutes
- Adding the nodes afterwards is also a piece of cake
- Being a lazy IT freak is kinda cool 😀
Karim Vaes 
Thanks for the post. What is your best practice for deploying nodes over https using this configuration?
You can leverage the Azure Application Gateway to publish Rancher. Do note that Rancher leverages Websockets. The Azure Application Gateway supports this, but it expects the traffic to flow over port 80 or 443. So when you deploy Rancher, load it up at the backend on port 80 or 443 instead of the default 8080. Otherwise you’ll see hosts (nodes) not registering or going into a disconnected state.