Deploy Mall‑Swarm on Kubernetes with Rancher: Full Step‑by‑Step Guide

Due to the popularity of Kubernetes, we finally provide a K8s deployment solution for the mall‑swarm project. After completing the K8s tutorial series, this guide demonstrates the practical steps using the mall‑swarm source.

Server Planning

We use two servers instead of a single‑machine deployment:

Base server (192.168.3.101) runs dependency services such as MySQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, etc., deployed with Docker.

Application server (192.168.3.102) runs the mall‑swarm application services (mall‑admin, mall‑portal, mall‑search, …) deployed with Kubernetes.

Image Packaging and Pushing

Modify pom.xml to set your Docker host, then package the project with Maven:

<properties>
    <!-- Change to your Docker remote address -->
    <docker.host>http://192.168.3.101:2375</docker.host>
</properties>

Run the Maven package command to build all images, then retag them for the remote repository:

docker tag mall/mall-gateway:1.0-SNAPSHOT macrodocker/mall-gateway:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker tag mall/mall-auth:1.0-SNAPSHOT macrodocker/mall-auth:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker tag mall/mall-monitor:1.0-SNAPSHOT macrodocker/mall-monitor:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker tag mall/mall-admin:1.0-SNAPSHOT macrodocker/mall-admin:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker tag mall/mall-portal:1.0-SNAPSHOT macrodocker/mall-portal:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker tag mall/mall-search:1.0-SNAPSHOT macrodocker/mall-search:1.0-SNAPSHOT

Push the images to Docker Hub (or use the pre‑uploaded images):

# Login Docker Hub
docker login
# Push to remote repository
docker push macrodocker/mall-gateway:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker push macrodocker/mall-auth:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker push macrodocker/mall-monitor:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker push macrodocker/mall-admin:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker push macrodocker/mall-portal:1.0-SNAPSHOT
docker push macrodocker/mall-search:1.0-SNAPSHOT

Base Server Deployment

Deploy the dependency services with Docker Compose. The project provides a docker-compose‑env.yml script; run:

docker-compose -f docker-compose-env.yml up -d

Application Server Deployment

Install Rancher

Pull and run the Rancher Docker image:

docker pull rancher/rancher:v2.5-head
docker run -p 80:80 -p 443:443 --name rancher \
  --privileged \
  --restart=unless-stopped \
  -d rancher/rancher:v2.5-head

After Rancher starts, access it at http://192.168.3.102 and add the configuration files from the config directory to Nacos.

Modify Nacos Configuration

Update the YAML files with the new IP addresses of MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, etc.

spring:
  datasource:
    url: jdbc:mysql://192.168.3.101:3306/mall?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf-8&serverTimezone=Asia/Shanghai
    username: root
    password: root
  redis:
    host: 192.168.3.101
    database: 0
    port: 6379
    password: # no password

Similar changes are required in mall-gateway-prod.yaml, mall-portal-prod.yaml, mall-search-prod.yaml, etc.

Deploy Applications with Rancher

If image pulling is slow, enter the Rancher container and pull images manually:

docker exec -it rancher /bin/bash
k3s crictl pull macrodocker/mall-gateway:1.0-SNAPSHOT
k3s crictl pull macrodocker/mall-auth:1.0-SNAPSHOT
k3s crictl pull macrodocker/mall-monitor:1.0-SNAPSHOT
k3s crictl pull macrodocker/mall-admin:1.0-SNAPSHOT
k3s crictl pull macrodocker/mall-portal:1.0-SNAPSHOT
k3s crictl pull macrodocker/mall-search:1.0-SNAPSHOT

Then create Deployments and Services in Rancher using the YAML files located in the k8s directory, e.g., mall-admin-deployment.yaml and mall-admin-service.yaml.

Result Verification

View all Deployments in Rancher (screenshot).

View all Services (screenshot).

Check pod logs with docker ps or Rancher UI.

Expose Services via Nginx Reverse Proxy

Run an Nginx container and configure it to forward api.macrozheng.com to the gateway service:

docker run -p 2080:2080 --name nginx \
  -v /mydata/nginx/html:/usr/share/nginx/html \
  -v /mydata/nginx/logs:/var/log/nginx \
  -v /mydata/nginx/conf:/etc/nginx \
  -d nginx:1.10

Obtain the Rancher container IP (e.g., 172.17.0.2) and add the following api.conf:

server {
    listen       2080;
    server_name  api.macrozheng.com;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $host:$server_port;
        proxy_pass   http://172.17.0.2:30201;
        index  index.html index.htm;
    }

    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}

Add a host entry on the client machine:

192.168.3.102 api.macrozheng.com

After the reverse proxy is set up, the API documentation is reachable at http://api.macrozheng.com:2080/doc.html.

Conclusion

Deploying the mall‑swarm project to Kubernetes shows that K8s is not as difficult as it seems; many concepts overlap with Docker. New technologies build on existing ones, so mastering Docker and traditional deployment methods helps you adopt Kubernetes more easily.

Project source code: https://github.com/macrozheng/mall-swarm