Rancher provides a catalog of application templates that make it easy to deploy these complex stacks. By accessing the Catalog tab, you can view all the templates that are available in the enabled catalogs. The Library catalog contains templates from the Rancher certified catalog and the community-catalog. Rancher will only be maintaining support for the certified templates in the library.
An admin of Rancher has the ability to add or remove catalogs to Rancher. The catalogs within Rancher can be found at Admin -> Settings. Adding a catalog is as simple as adding a catalog name and a URL. The URL needs to one that git clone can handle. Whenever you add a catalog entry, it will be immediately available in your catalog.
If you are running Rancher server behind a proxy, you will need to start Rancher with certain environment variables in order for the Rancher catalog to work in Rancher.
Search for your desired template or use the filters for category or catalog. Once you have found your template, click on Launch. Fill in the required information for the template.
docker-compose.yml and rancher-compose.yml files that are being used to generate the stacks by expanding Preview before creating the stack.After you click on Create, the stack is immediately created, but none of the services have started. Click on Start Services from the stack dropdown menu to start all the services of the stack.
The great thing about Rancher is that if a newer version of a template has been uploaded to the catalog, we’ll inform you that a newer version is available to upgrade to. When you click on Upgrade Available, you can select which version you want to upgrade to. After selecting the version, the Configuration Options will need to be reviewed before clicking on Save.
After all the services have been upgraded, the stack and services will be in an Upgraded state. If you are satisfied with your upgrade, the last step is to confirm the upgrade by clicking on the Finish Upgrade in the stack dropdown menu. Note: Once you have finished your upgrade, you will not be able to revert to the older version.
If something went wrong during your upgrade and you need to revert to the previous version, you would want to select Rollback in the stack dropdown menu.
The Rancher catalog service requires private catalogs to be structured in a specific format in order for the catalog service to be able to translate it into Rancher.
Catalog templates are displayed in Rancher based on what cluster management type of environment that you are in.
templates folderkubernetes-templates folderswarm-templates folder-- templates OR kubernetes-templates OR swarm-templates
|-- cloudflare
| |-- 0
| | |-- docker-compose.yml
| | |-- rancher-compose.yml
| |-- 1
| | |-- docker-compose.yml
| | |-- rancher-compose.yml
| |-- catalogIcon-cloudflare.svg
| |-- config.yml
...
In the main directory, you will need a templates folder. The templates folder will contain folders of each catalog entry that you have created. We recommend that each catalog entry have a simple template name as the folder name.
In the catalog entry folder (e.g. cloudflare), there will be folders for each version that you have created for your catalog entry. The first version should be 0 and each subsequent version will be an incremental value. For example, version 2 will be in the 1 folder. By providing a new version folder number, it provides a way to upgrade your stack from a previous version of the template. Alternatively, you could update the templates in the 0 folder and just re-deploy the entry.
Note: Each catalog entry will need to be a single word, so please use
-instead of spaces for longer catalog names. You can use spaces in thenamesection of theconfig.yml.
Within the catalog entry folder, the details of how to display your catalog entry in the Rancher catalog are located in two files.
config.yml contains the details of your entry.name: # Name of the Catalog Entry
description: |
# Description of the Catalog Entry
version: # Version of the Catalog to be used
category: # Category to be used for searching catalog entries
maintainer: # The maintainer of the catalog entry
license: # The license
projectURL: # A URL related to the catalog entry
catalogIcon-.For every catalog entry, there will be a minimum of three items: config.yml, catalogIcon-entry.svg, and the 0 folder, which holds the first version of the catalog entry.
The docker-compose.yml and rancher-compose.yml are the required files to be able to launch the services in Rancher using rancher-compose. These files are located within the version folder number (i.e. 0, 1, etc.).
The docker-compose.yml should be a file that could also be launched using docker-compose up. The services follow the docker-compose format.
The rancher-compose.yml will contain additional information to help customize your catalog entries. In the .catalog section, there are some fields that will be required in order to have your catalog entry interpreted correctly.
An optional README.md is possible to be created, which provides a lengthy description or notes on how to use the catalog service.
rancher-compose.yml
.catalog:
name: # Name of the versioned template of the Catalog Entry
version: # Version of the versioned template of the Catalog Entry
description: # Description of the versioned template of the Catalog Entry
uuid: # Unique identifier to be used for upgrades. Please see note.
minimum_rancher_version: # The minimum version of Rancher that supports the template
questions: #Used to request user input for configuration options
Note: The
uuidis a required parameter that is used for upgrade scenarios. Eachuuidmust be unique and each later version should be incremental. The recommended format is to use the name of the catalog entry and suffixed with a-0. As versions are introduced, you would increment the-0to-1for the next entry.
rancher-compose.ymlThe questions section of .catalog is used to allow the user to change the configuration options of the services. The answers would be populated within the docker-compose.yml before the services are launched.
Each configuration option is a list item in the questions section of the rancher-compose.yml.
.catalog:
questions:
- variable: # A single word that is used to pair the question and answer.
label: # The "question" to be answered.
description: | # The description of the question to show the user how to answer the question.
default: # (Optional) A default value that will be pre-populated into the UI
required: # (Optional) Whether or not an answer is required. By default, it's considered `false`.
type: # How the questions are formatted and types of response expected
Type
The type section controls how the questions are formatted in the UI as well as the types of responses that are expected.
Eligible formats are:
string
A textbox will be shown in the UI to capture the answer, and the answer will be formatted to a string.
int
A textbox will be shown in the UI to capture the answer, and the answer will be formatted to a number. The UI will validate whether or not it’s a valid number before launching the template.
boolean
A radio button will be shown in the UI to capture the answer, and the answer will be formatted to true or false. If the radio button is selected, the answer will be formatted to true.
password
A textbox will be shown in the UI to capture the answer, and the answer will be formatted to a string.
service
A drop-down of all services in the environment will be displayed.
enum
A drop-down menu will be shown in the UI and the options section will be populated in the drop-down.
.catalog:
questions:
- variable:
label:
description: |
type: enum
options: # List of options if using type of `enum`
- Option 1
- Option 2
multiline
A multiple line textbox will be shown in the UI.
.catalog:
questions:
- variable:
label:
description: |
type: multiline
default: |
Each line
would be shown
on a separate
line.
certificate
A drop down of all available certificates in the environment.
.catalog:
questions:
- variable:
label:
description: |
type: certificate