Dear community members, We are new to Rancher and to RKE2. We want to setup a RKE2 cluster in our airgapped VMware vSphere environment without the use of Rancher (used for bootstrapping). This works, but after the installation of the rke2 kubernetes cluster, I want to automatically install the vsphere cloud provider. According to the documentation this should be possible using this configuration: Contents of /etc/rancher/rke2/config.yaml: token: SECRET tls-san: - kubernetes.my.domain.local write-kubeconfig-mode: "0644" cloud-provider-name: rancher-vsphere cloud-provider-config: /etc/rancher/rke2/vsphere.conf Contents of /etc/rancher/rke2/vsphere.conf: [Global] datacenters = "tkgi" insecure-flag = "1" user = "ADuser@my.domain.local" password = "PASSWORD" server = "vcenter.my.domain.local" port = "443" cluster-id = "testclusterid0001" [VirtualCenter "vcenter.my.domain.local"] user = "ADuser@my.domain.local" port = "443" password = "PASSWORD" datacenters = "rke2" I get the following errors after systemctl start rke2-server.service and waiting a while. We use rke2 version 1.24.13+rke2r1. kubectl logs pod/rancher-vsphere-cpi-cloud-controller-manager-bgqd7 -n kube-system ... E0523 142529.727585 1 config_yaml.go:136] vsphere.conf does not have the VirtualCenter IP address specified E0523 142529.727593 1 config_yaml.go:214] validateConfig failed: vsphere.conf does not have the VirtualCenter IP address specified W0523 142529.727598 1 config.go:69] ReadCPIConfigYAML failed: vsphere.conf does not have the VirtualCenter IP address specified E0523 142529.727615 1 config.go:73] ReadConfigINI failed: 31 expected section header F0523 142529.727625 1 main.go:265] Cloud provider could not be initialized: could not init cloud provider "vsphere": 31 expected section header ... This is caused by a ConfigMap that doesn't have the correct contents: kubectl describe ConfigMap/vsphere-cloud-config -n kube-system Name: vsphere-cloud-config Namespace: kube-system Labels: app.kubernetes.io/managed-by=Helm component=rancher-vsphere-cpi-cloud-controller-manager vsphere-cpi-infra=config Annotations: meta.helm.sh/release-name: rancher-vsphere-cpi meta.helm.sh/release-namespace: kube-system Data ==== vsphere.yaml: ---- # Global properties in this section will be used for all specified vCenters unless overriden in VirtualCenter section. global: secretName: "vsphere-cpi-creds" secretNamespace: "kube-system" port: 443 insecureFlag: true # vcenter section vcenter: "": server: "" datacenters: - "" Also the vsphere-cpi-creds secret is not correct. kubectl get all -n kube-system ... NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE pod/etcd-rancher04-01 1/1 Running 0 14m pod/helm-install-rancher-vsphere-cpi-tj8sl 0/1 Completed 0 14m pod/helm-install-rancher-vsphere-csi-h9j9m 0/1 CrashLoopBackOff 7 (4m3s ago) 14m pod/helm-install-rke2-canal-zhf4w 0/1 Completed 0 14m pod/helm-install-rke2-coredns-mvcbj 0/1 Completed 0 14m pod/helm-install-rke2-ingress-nginx-tlsdk 0/1 Pending 0 14m pod/helm-install-rke2-metrics-server-r7dx8 0/1 Pending 0 14m pod/kube-apiserver-rancher04-01 1/1 Running 0 14m pod/kube-controller-manager-rancher04-01 1/1 Running 0 14m pod/kube-proxy-rancher04-01 1/1 Running 0 14m pod/kube-scheduler-rancher04-01 1/1 Running 0 14m pod/rancher-vsphere-cpi-cloud-controller-manager-5g946 0/1 ImagePullBackOff 0 14m pod/rke2-canal-pfhx7 2/2 Running 0 14m pod/rke2-coredns-rke2-coredns-7f75564ff4-fnxlw 0/1 Pending 0 14m pod/rke2-coredns-rke2-coredns-autoscaler-84d67b7c48-72dtj 0/1 Pending 0 14m ... My question is how to get this working. I think the /etc/rancher/rke2/vsphere.conf file should be used by the rke2 service to generate a Helm chart with the correct values, but this fails somehow.

Hey - So we use vSphere to host all our RKE2 clusters. I'll be very honest and say that we've had a much easier time using the upstream VMWare controller installation docs, rather than the Rancher ones. I'd suggest giving it a try. The docs are on the VM website and very clear, concise, and easy to update when needed.

Ok, that is an option, but not so nice from an automation perspective. Thanks, I will look into it. A related question is: how to automatically install the CPI and CSI when developers create a cluster using Rancher?