Installation¶

This guide walks through installing the Rackspace Spot driver in Rancher and creating your first cluster.

Prerequisites¶

• A running Rancher instance (v2.10 or later — UI extension requires Dashboard v2.10+)
• A Rackspace Spot account with an organization already created
• A Rackspace Spot refresh token (see Obtaining credentials below)
• Outbound HTTPS access from your Rancher server to api.rackspace.com

Obtaining credentials¶

The driver authenticates with Rackspace Spot using a long-lived refresh token.

1. Log in to the Rackspace Spot console
2. Navigate to Account → API Access
3. Click Get new token, give it a name, and copy the value — you will not see it again

Installing the driver¶

The driver and its UI extension are distributed as a Helm chart via the GitHub Pages Helm repository.

Step 1 — Add the extension repository¶

1. Open the Rancher UI and navigate to ☰ → Extensions
2. Click ⋮ → Manage Extension Repositories
3. Click Create and fill in:

1. Click Create

Alternatively, install via Helm directly:

helm repo add rackspace-spot https://teamzuzu.github.io/rancher-rackspace-spot-driver
helm repo update
helm install rackspacespot rackspace-spot/rackspacespot \
  --namespace cattle-ui-plugin-system \
  --create-namespace

Step 2 — Install the extension¶

1. Navigate to ☰ → Extensions → Available
2. Find Rackspace Spot and click Install

Rancher installs the Helm chart, which registers:

• A KontainerDriver — tells Rancher where to download the binary
• A UIPlugin — tells Rancher's Dashboard where to load the cluster configuration form from

The cluster driver status changes to Active within ~30 seconds.

Creating a cluster¶

1. Go to ☰ → Cluster Management → Clusters → Create
2. Select Rackspace Spot from the provider list
3. Fill in the cluster configuration (see Configuration reference):

Required fields¶

Optional fields¶

See the full Configuration reference for all available options.

1. Click Create and wait for the cluster to reach the Active state

Upgrading the driver¶

To upgrade, update the repository and upgrade the Helm chart:

helm repo update rackspace-spot
helm upgrade rackspacespot rackspace-spot/rackspacespot \
  --namespace cattle-ui-plugin-system

Or via ☰ → Extensions → Installed → Rackspace Spot → ⋮ → Upgrade.

Existing clusters are not affected until their next reconciliation.

Removing the driver¶

1. Navigate to ☰ → Extensions → Installed
2. Find Rackspace Spot and click ⋮ → Uninstall