How to Build a Private Cloud Infrastructure Using Rancher & Docker

Your step-by-step guide to building your own robust private cloud

DevOps • UPDATED ON December 6, 2021

Roman Prydybailo

Author

If you want to know how to build your own private cloud infrastructure, we’ll explain exactly how that’s done using Rancher and Docker. In this step-by-step tutorial, we’re going to walk you through the exact process K&C’s DevOps consultants use to build a private cloud in a data centre using a Docker and Rancher stack.

Why Build A Private Cloud?

A hybrid cloud setup that splits workloads between public and private clouds is increasingly common. That’s especially the case at the Enterprise level where data sensitivity, compliance regulations and other security concerns often mean certain loads simply cannot use a public cloud facility.

But there are a number of other reasons why a private cloud facility may be either a necessity or preference. For a DevOps software development team, a private cloud may be used as a development and testing environment as part of a CI/CD pipeline.

Private clouds can also be used to keep legacy applications running when it doesn’t make sense to update them for compatibility with a public cloud platform. A private cloud can also be fully customised to optimally run specific workloads, especially those involving big data.

Whatever your reasons are for building a private cloud environment, for us at K&C, it is mainly a development and testing stage in a DevOps CI/CD pipeline, this step-by-step tutorial should provide a great starting point for how to go about it. You will need a solid foundational knowledge of Docker and Rancher to build your own private cloud, even with the guidance of the instructions below.

RANCHER OPERATION SCHEME

1. Setting up a local DNS

nano /etc/named/cloud.zones

zone "cloud.infra" {
        type master;
        file "/var/named/master/cloud.infra";
};

2. Setting up a master server

nano /var/named/master/cloud.infra

$TTL    3600
@	IN	SOA     ns.cloud.infra. hostmaster.cloud.com. (
                                2015111800	; Serial
                                28800           ; Refresh
                                7200            ; Retry
                                604800          ; Expire
                                3600 )         ; Default Minimum TTL
 
                IN	NS ns.cloud.infra.
master1         A	192.168.11.72
ci1             A	192.168.11.73
ci2             A	192.168.11.132
web	        A	192.168.11.140

service named restart

sudo docker run -d --restart=always -p 8080:8080 rancher/server

docker run -d -p 8500:8500 -p 53:8600/udp   
-p 400:8400 -p 8300:8300 -p 8301:8301 -p 8302:8302 
--name=consul gliderlabs/consul-server -bootstrap

docker run -d -p 32769:8080 jenkins

3. Setting up clients

sudo docker run -e CATTLE_AGENT_IP="192.168.11.73"   
-d --privileged -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock  
-v /var/lib/rancher:/var/lib/rancher rancher/agent:v1.0.2  
http://master1.cloud.infra:8080/v1/scripts/E0EC8B33530A5512C0C7:q2qdFb3XY4

docker run -d -v  
/var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock gliderlabs/registrator 
-ip 192.168.11.73 consul://192.168.11.72:8500

sudo docker run -e CATTLE_AGENT_IP="192.168.11.132"   
-d --privileged -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock  
-v /var/lib/rancher:/var/lib/rancher rancher/agent:v1.0.2  
http://master1.cloud.infra:8080/v1/scripts/E0EC8B33530A5512C0C7:1473764400000:jq2qdFb3XY4

docker run -d -v  
/var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock gliderlabs/registrator 
-ip 192.168.11.132 consul://192.168.11.72:8500

4. Setting up a project

nano docker-compose-rancher.yml

homepage:
  image: registry.cloud.infra/homepage 
  ports:
   - "3000"
  links:
   - mongo
  environment:
   - MONGO_URL=mongodb://mongo:27017/homepage-dev
   - ROOT_URL=http://localhost
   - MAIL_URL=smtp://some.mailserver.com:25
  labels:
    io.rancher.container.pull_image: always
mongo:
  image: mongo:3.2.6
  command: mongod --smallfiles
  volumes:
      - /srv/docker/homepage/mongo:/data/db
  labels:
    io.rancher.container.pull_image: always

nano new.sh

#!/bin/bash
 
IMAGE_NAME="registry.cloud.infra/homepage"
 
case "${1}" in
	--build | -b )  docker build --no-cache --rm -t ${IMAGE_NAME} .
		;;
	--run | -r ) docker run -d -P -t ${IMAGE_NAME}
        ;;
    --help | -h ) printf "usage: ${0} [arg]n--build,-btBuild imagen--run,-rtRunn"
		;;
	* ) printf "Print ${0} --help for helpn"
		;;
esac

export RANCHER_URL='https://master1.cloud.infra:8080/v1/'
export RANCHER_ACCESS_KEY='access'
export RANCHER_SECRET_KEY='secret'

rancher-compose --file docker-compose-rancher.yml create

rancher-compose --file docker-compose-rancher.yml up -d

5. Setting up a WEB server

yum install nginx
wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/consul-template/0.15.0/

nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/homepage.ctmpl

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name homepage.cloud.infra;
    client_max_body_size 4M;
    proxy_cache            one;
 
    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $host:$server_port;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        {{range service "homepage-3000" }}
        proxy_pass http://{{.Address}}:{{.Port}};{{end}}
        proxy_read_timeout 90;
        proxy_cache_valid      200  10m;
        proxy_cache_methods    GET HEAD POST;
        proxy_cache_use_stale  error timeout invalid_header updating http_500 http_502 http_503 http_504;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header   Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header   Connection "upgrade";
    }
 
}

service nginx start 
consul-template  
-consul master1.cloud.infra:8500  
-template "/etc/nginx/conf.d/nginx.ctmpl:/etc/nginx/conf.d/nginx.conf:service nginx restart"

6. Jenkins CI

cd $JOB_NAME; ./new.sh -b
docker push registry/homepage
rancher-compose --file docker-compose-rancher.yml up --force-upgrade --pull --confirm-upgrade -d

Your Private Cloud Is Ready For Project Deployment