--- title: Rancher AWS Quick Start Guide description: Read this step by step Rancher AWS guide to quickly deploy a Rancher Server with a single node cluster attached. --- The following steps will quickly deploy a Rancher Server on AWS with a single node cluster attached. >**Note:** 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 >**Note** >Deploying to Amazon AWS will incur charges. - [Amazon AWS Account](https://aws.amazon.com/account/): An Amazon AWS Account is required to create resources for deploying Rancher and Kubernetes. - [Amazon AWS Access Key](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/managing-aws-access-keys.html): Use this link to follow a tutorial to create an Amazon AWS Access Key if you don't have one yet. - Install [Terraform](https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html): Used to provision the server and cluster in Amazon AWS. ## Getting Started 1. Clone [Rancher Quickstart](https://github.com/rancher/quickstart) to a folder using `git clone https://github.com/rancher/quickstart`. 1. Go into the AWS folder containing the Terraform files by executing `cd quickstart/aws`. 1. Rename the `terraform.tfvars.example` file to `terraform.tfvars`. 1. Edit `terraform.tfvars` and customize the following variables: - `aws_access_key` - Amazon AWS Access Key - `aws_secret_key` - Amazon AWS Secret Key - `rancher_server_admin_password` - Admin password for created Rancher server 1. **Optional:** Modify optional variables within `terraform.tfvars`. See the [Quickstart Readme](https://github.com/rancher/quickstart) and the [AWS Quickstart Readme](https://github.com/rancher/quickstart/tree/master/rancher/aws#readme) for more information. Suggestions include: - `aws_region` - Amazon AWS region, choose the closest instead of the default - `prefix` - Prefix for all created resources - `instance_type` - EC2 instance size used, minimum is `t3a.medium` but `t3a.large` or `t3a.xlarge` could be used if within budget 1. Run `terraform init`. 1. To initiate the creation of the environment, run `terraform apply --auto-approve`. Then wait for output similar to the following: ``` Apply complete! Resources: 16 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 ``` 1. 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`). #### Result Two Kubernetes clusters are deployed into your AWS 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. ### 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/aws` folder, execute `terraform destroy --auto-approve`. 2. Wait for confirmation that all resources have been destroyed.