# Lightweight K3s Rancher Node

**URL:** <https://forums.suse.com/t/lightweight-k3s-rancher-node/15937>\
**Category:** SUSE Rancher Prime\
**Created:** [November 26, 2019, 9:07pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/lightweight-k3s-rancher-node/15937 "2019-11-26T21:07:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![naisanza](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/naisanza/32/3120_2.png) [@naisanza](https://forums.suse.com/u/naisanza)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2019, 9:07pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/lightweight-k3s-rancher-node/15937/1 "2019-11-26T21:07:23Z")

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I’m looking to use Rancher’s K3s on IOT devices, but I want to manage it from Rancher

Is there a way to deploy and manage K3s nodes from Rancher?

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**Author:** ![shubbard343](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@shubbard343](https://forums.suse.com/u/shubbard343)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 9:11pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/lightweight-k3s-rancher-node/15937/2 "2019-11-27T21:11:52Z")

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What do you mean by “deploy and manage”? K3s is just another way to create a Kubernetes cluster. You use K3s to create a cluster, and then you can import it into Rancher, and from then on Rancher will manage the cluster just like any other Kubernetes cluster.

I don’t think there is currently a way to create a K3s Kubernetes cluster from Rancher itself. The current way to make a custom cluster uses Docker to run Kubernetes, not K3s.

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**Author:** ![naisanza](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/naisanza/32/3120_2.png) [@naisanza](https://forums.suse.com/u/naisanza)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 3:09am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/lightweight-k3s-rancher-node/15937/3 "2019-11-28T03:09:34Z")

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You’re completely right!

I haven’t thought about it that way yet! I wanted Rancher to deploy K3S to the node (less work for me)

But if that doesn’t exist, it’s nice that I can import any kubernetes cluster into Rancher. I’ll give that a try

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![Fraser\_Goffin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/fraser_goffin/32/6608_2.png) [@Fraser\_Goffin](https://forums.suse.com/u/Fraser_Goffin)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/lightweight-k3s-rancher-node/15937/4 "2019-12-01T23:14:43Z")

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I assume you’ve read through the K3s docs, it’s about as simple as it gets to install (unless you need to customise a bunch of stuff).

There are also a range of other k3s ‘installers’ (actually that does them a bit of an injustice) such as k3sup