---
title: Rancher Architecture
---

<head>
  <link rel="canonical" href="https://ranchermanager.docs.rancher.com/reference-guides/rancher-manager-architecture"/>
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This section focuses on the [Rancher server and its components](rancher-server-and-components.md) and how [Rancher communicates with downstream Kubernetes clusters](communicating-with-downstream-user-clusters.md).

For information on the different ways that Rancher can be installed, refer to the [overview of installation options.](../../getting-started/installation-and-upgrade/installation-and-upgrade.md#overview-of-installation-options)

For a list of main features of the Rancher API server, refer to the [overview section.](../../getting-started/introduction/overview.md#features-of-the-rancher-api-server)

For guidance about setting up the underlying infrastructure for the Rancher server, refer to the [architecture recommendations.](architecture-recommendations.md)

:::note

This section assumes a basic familiarity with Docker and Kubernetes. For a brief explanation of how Kubernetes components work together, refer to the [concepts](../kubernetes-concepts.md) page.

:::
