I want to understand the definition of

local cluster

. Does it refer to the Rancher installation? In my case we have on-prem bare metal cluster with Rancher + app workloads sharing the same cluster. I cannot connect to the Rancher cluster. I have the kubeconfig YAML downloaded but not sure on where i am connecting - is it Rancher API Server or k8s API server endpoint and also what is the user?

AFAIK, at least in the single docker container deployment the

local

cluster is the one running in the docker container on the Rancher machine, that runs the WebUI and other managment services and operators to know which one are you connecting to, you can look to the URL of the

server

field in the kubeconfig file if ends in

k8s/clusters/local

, thats the local cluster, or the management cluster, if ends in a string like

c-m-XXXXXXXX

its your real cluster, where your workloads run, for example

k8s/clusters/c-m-xzfwzztb

Thanks @ancient-energy-15842. Yes i see a

local

cluster and also another cluster called

rancher-web

. Ideally Rancher cluster and the kubernetes cluster (where workloads are deployed) are separate clusters, is that a good practice?

that's usually the way it works by default, the local cluster runs in the VM that runs the docker container and the workload cluster runs in other VMs

I see but are the VMs still part of 1 single cluster?

at least with the docker container deployment scheme yes, with Helm I don't know really

Okay yes good point you made. We use helm by the way.

oh, then I don't know, sorry

no problem