so i'm looking to integrate my harvester cluster (5 nodes, production env) into a rancher instance, but i dont have a dedicated rancher setup. the main reason i want to do this to then deploy a k8s cluster on top of harvester using rancher. the docs note NOT to use docker for rancher prod setup, but considering i'm only managing a small setup, is it a bad idea to use docker as long as i create a volume and setup backups using the rancher backup app?

This is a large 'missing piece' for me, too. We have no pre-existing rancher cluster, so support suggests standing up VM's and creating a rancher cluster on top of the VM's on top of harvester. So...I have to setup vms, install k3s, install rancher, and then tie it back into harvester. Seems like we should be able to install rancher in the underlying harvester k3s/rke2 cluster with a simple helm chart. Rancher should be an add-on in the harvester UI, IMO. 😬

If this isn't production then it's okay to have a single VM within Harvester to host Rancher in a VM. Yes you have to make sure you don't cut off branch you're standing on but it isn't production - for that you want a proper set up (3 nodes not in Harvester)

@victorious-lighter-37844 you replied to a question i had a while back, in my case i have a desktop pc (fairly powerful, an i9 with 32gb of mem, 8 cores) it's got docker desktop on it, would it be a terrible idea to run rancher docker container on that pc, and use it to manage a small, production harvester cluster, so long as the pc itself (and docker/rancer) is properly backed up?

https://docs.harvesterhci.io/v1.1/rancher/rancher-integration notes that you should "*not install Rancher with Docker in production*. Otherwise, your environment may be damaged and your cluster may not be recovered. Installing Rancher in Docker should only be used for quick evaluation and testing purposes." Personally I might consider this for my home lab/development but I wouldn't do this for a production cluster. Note Rancher integration is being looked at - see https://github.com/harvester/harvester/issues/2679#issuecomment-1249992670