RancherOS 1.1.0: Updated Docker support, VMware, Syslinux, and more

RancherOS v1.1.0 is [now available]! It includes a number of key enhancements such as: VMWare ESXi support; improved OS level logging, including boot-time logs; remote Syslog logging; and built in Logrotate and Cron services. Syslinux support has improved with the addition of a boot menu, allowing you to select debug, autologin, and recovery consoles. The reboot command can kexec into the latest and previous OS versions. With RancherOS v1.1.0 you still select Docker engines between 1.12 and 17.06. However, support for Docker v1.10 and v1.11 is no longer available. RancherOS v1.0.x, our Long Term Support (LTS) version is now at v1.0.4, with bug fixes and stable improvements continuing until April 2018.

VMWare ESXi support

RancherOS now officially supports VMWare ESXi 6.5, and if it detects that its running in a VMWare hypervisor, automatically adds the VMWare guestinfo cloud-init datasource and enables the open-vm-tools service (requires internet access). This support has been paired with changes in docker-machine v0.12.2 to allow you to set the cloud-init.config.url or cloud-init.config.data guestinfo values using the --vmwarevsphere-cloudinit argument.

docker-machine -D create --driver vmwarevsphere \
        --vmwarevsphere-username root --vmwarevsphere-password ******* \
        --vmwarevsphere-network "VM Network" --vmwarevsphere-vcenter 10.10.10.41 \
        --vmwarevsphere-boot2docker-url rancheros.iso \
        --vmwarevsphere-cloudinit https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RoastLink/roastlink.github.io/master/cloud-config.yml \
        cloud-init-url

docker-machine -D create --driver vmwarevsphere \
         --vmwarevsphere-username root --vmwarevsphere-password ******* \
         --vmwarevsphere-network "VM Network" --vmwarevsphere-vcenter 10.10.10.41 \
         --vmwarevsphere-boot2docker-url https://releases.rancher.com/os/latest/rancheros.iso \
         --vmwarevsphere-cloudinit cloud-config.yml \
         cloud-init-local-file

Logging improvements

The RancherOS boot and system services logging now allows admins to examine the debug information output during boot-up and initialization. The extra files can be found in the /var/log/boot folder of the console. In addition, you can use the netconsole kernel boot parameters to log both the kernel level and RancherOS debug logs to a remote syslog server for later analysis. Logrotate and a Cron system container have been added to run by default.

Syslinux boot menu

RancherOS now gives you an interactive boot menu from which you can select common debug and development options such as auto login, debug logging, and the recovery console as well as temporarily edit the kernel boot parameters. You can also use the new sudo ros config syslinux command to edit the system’s global.cfg boot config.

Direction for RancherOS v1.2.0

Some of the features we’re considering next are:

• Rancher/Strato for 32bit and 64bit ARM
• More work towards simplifying building customised RancherOS builds (LinuxKit)
• Rancher Compose and Containerd
• Hyper-V support
• adding more functionality to our cloud-init immutable OS configuration.

As always, we appreciate your input on RancherOS. You can provide feedback by [filing an issue] or sending me (@svendowideit) a message on the Rancher Users [Slack channel]. You can download RancherOS 1.1.1 [here]. The [quick start guide] in the RancherOS docs provides guidance on how to get started.