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title: Best Practices for the Rancher Server
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This guide contains our recommendations for running the Rancher server, and is intended to be used in situations in which Rancher manages downstream Kubernetes clusters.

### Recommended Architecture and Infrastructure

Refer to this [guide](tips-for-running-rancher.md) for our general advice for setting up the Rancher server on a high-availability Kubernetes cluster.

### Deployment Strategies

This [guide](rancher-deployment-strategy.md) is designed to help you choose whether a regional deployment strategy or a hub-and-spoke deployment strategy is better for a Rancher server that manages downstream Kubernetes clusters.

### Installing Rancher in a VMware vSphere Environment

This [guide](on-premises-rancher-in-vsphere.md) outlines a reference architecture for installing Rancher in a vSphere environment, in addition to standard vSphere best practices as documented by VMware.