One of the big questions I've had is what exactly to make these images with that rke2 uses. Images using the Ubuntu server iso and using packer to configure were very flaky and when the clusters did deploy they failed often when adding nodes. I am using vSphere btw. I discovered the Ubuntu cloud images which come in various formats. I used the ova which weighs in at ~650mb! Not only do these deploy faster because of their size, RKE2 likes them more! I have clusters deploying in various configurations in like 3 minutes! Wish I would have known about this sooner 😅

Glad you found a solution. Are you saying that you are using Rancher Manager to deploy RKE2 clusters with nodes running in vSphere, and you needed to figure out how to compose the disk images for the nodes?

Yes exactly. I was previously using https://github.com/David-VTUK/Rancher-Packer to make images.

Would that be a vSphere feature? I know in Harvester I can create images from the cloud image qcow2 file, then use the image as a volume on a VM.

Oh I was thinking that could be an option on the vsphere driver for rancher

That would be convenient.

In my renewed mental model, I think image maintenance is perhaps an anti pattern. A better way could be to use manifests to update the host's configuration