rancher/terraform-provider-rancher2

Terraform Provider for Rancher2 is a Terraform provider that enables infrastructure-as-code management of Rancher v2 Kubernetes clusters and their resources.

The provider solves the problem of managing Rancher deployments through Terraform, allowing operators to define and version-control their Rancher infrastructure declaratively. It works by exposing Rancher's API surface as Terraform resources and data sources, letting users provision clusters, projects, namespaces, and other Rancher objects alongside their broader infrastructure definitions.

Teams managing Rancher environments should adopt this provider if they already use Terraform for infrastructure automation and want to extend that practice to Rancher configuration. It suits projects where Rancher serves as the Kubernetes management layer and infrastructure consistency across environments matters. The provider's branching strategy aligns major versions with Rancher minor releases, so adopters need to track which provider version corresponds to their Rancher deployment version to ensure compatibility.

The project maintains separate release branches for each Rancher minor version rather than releasing from the main branch, enabling early integration testing and out-of-band patch releases independent of Rancher's release cycle. Acceptance testing relies on real AWS infrastructure and requires credentials, reflecting a commitment to validating against live Rancher deployments rather than mocks. The provider's lifecycle is explicitly tied to Rancher's support matrix, with each major version receiving active maintenance only through the end-of-maintenance date for its corresponding Rancher minor version.