---
title: Rancher DigitalOcean Quick Start Guide
description: Read this step by step Rancher DigitalOcean guide to quickly deploy a Rancher server with a single-node downstream Kubernetes cluster attached.
---

<head>
  <link rel="canonical" href="https://ranchermanager.docs.rancher.com/getting-started/quick-start-guides/deploy-rancher-manager/digitalocean"/>
</head>

The following steps will quickly deploy a Rancher server on DigitalOcean in a single-node K3s Kubernetes cluster, with a single-node downstream Kubernetes cluster attached.

:::caution

The intent of these guides is to quickly launch a sandbox that you can use to evaluate Rancher. These guides are not intended for production environments. For comprehensive setup instructions, see [Installation](../../installation-and-upgrade/installation-and-upgrade.md).

:::

## Prerequisites

:::caution

Deploying to DigitalOcean will incur charges.

:::

- [DigitalOcean Account](https://www.digitalocean.com): You will require an account on DigitalOcean as this is where the server and cluster will run.
- [DigitalOcean Access Key](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-digitalocean-space-and-api-key): Use this link to create a DigitalOcean Access Key if you don't have one.
- [Terraform](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/install): Used to provision the server and cluster to DigitalOcean.


## Getting Started

1. Clone [Rancher Quickstart](https://github.com/rancher/quickstart) to a folder using `git clone https://github.com/rancher/quickstart`.

2. Go into the DigitalOcean folder containing the Terraform files by executing `cd quickstart/rancher/do`.

3. Rename the `terraform.tfvars.example` file to `terraform.tfvars`.

4. Edit `terraform.tfvars` and customize the following variables:
    - `do_token` - DigitalOcean access key
    - `rancher_server_admin_password` - Admin password for created Rancher server. See [Setting up the Bootstrap Password](../../installation-and-upgrade/resources/bootstrap-password.md#password-requirements) for password requirements.

5. **Optional:** Modify optional variables within `terraform.tfvars`.
See the [Quickstart Readme](https://github.com/rancher/quickstart) and the [DO Quickstart Readme](https://github.com/rancher/quickstart/tree/master/rancher/do) for more information. Suggestions include:
   - `do_region` - DigitalOcean region, choose the closest instead of the default (`nyc1`)
   - `prefix` - Prefix for all created resources
   - `droplet_size` - Droplet size used, minimum is `s-2vcpu-4gb` but `s-4vcpu-8gb` could be used if within budget

6. Run `terraform init`.

7. To initiate the creation of the environment, run `terraform apply --auto-approve`. Then wait for output similar to the following:

    ```
    Apply complete! Resources: 15 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

    Outputs:

    rancher_node_ip = xx.xx.xx.xx
    rancher_server_url = https://rancher.xx.xx.xx.xx.sslip.io
    workload_node_ip = yy.yy.yy.yy
    ```

8. Paste the `rancher_server_url` from the output above into the browser. Log in when prompted (default username is `admin`, use the password set in `rancher_server_admin_password`).
9. ssh to the Rancher Server using the `id_rsa` key generated in `quickstart/rancher/do`.

#### Result

Two Kubernetes clusters are deployed into your DigitalOcean account, one running Rancher Server and the other ready for experimentation deployments. Please note that while this setup is a great way to explore Rancher functionality, a production setup should follow our high availability setup guidelines. SSH keys for the VMs are auto-generated and stored in the module directory.

### What's Next?

Use Rancher to create a deployment. For more information, see [Creating Deployments](../deploy-workloads/deploy-workloads.md).

## Destroying the Environment

1. From the `quickstart/rancher/do` folder, execute `terraform destroy --auto-approve`.

2. Wait for confirmation that all resources have been destroyed.
