rke2.md

RKE - Rancher Kubernetes Engine

This is a locally installable Kubernetes distribution bundling k3s and other components.

https://docs.rke2.io/

• RKE2 Versions vs Kubernetes Versions
• CLI - Kubectl Kubeconfig

RKE2 Versions vs Kubernetes Versions

RKE2 versions match Kubernetes versions.

Kubernetes versions are important for API object compatibility as Kubernetes is often changing/deprecating/removing objects they support between versions over the years, which breaks applications that are not upgraded to support the corresponding Kubernetes API version.

RKE2 versions are prefixed to align with Kubernetes versions eg. RKE2 v1.28.9+rke2r1 will install Kubernetes v1.28.9.

CLI - Kubectl Kubeconfig

On an RKE2 node you can do:

export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/rke2/rke2.yaml

Now run kubectl commands as per usual.