End-to-End Kubernetes with Rancher, RKE2, K3s, Fleet, Longhorn, and NeuVector

System Agent

When deploying RKE2 or K3s clusters using Rancher, only the cluster agent (cattle-cluster-agent) is deployed, while the node agent (cattle-node-agent) is not (since RKE2 and K3s clusters do not require it). Instead, Rancher uses the rancher-system-agent, installed via a system-level script, to connect to Rancher and execute node plans (e.g., installing RKE2/K3s).

You can see the rancher-system-agent running using the following command on one of the nodes of an RKE2/K3s cluster: