19.1 Two Ranchers¶

Harvester runs an embedded Rancher internally (it powers the Harvester UI and cluster management), but it's not meant to be your multi-cluster Rancher. For multi-cluster management you run a separate Rancher Manager and import Harvester into it.

19.2 Importing Harvester into Rancher¶

1. In Rancher: Virtualization Management → Import Existing → name the cluster → copy the registration URL.
2. In Harvester: Advanced → Settings → cluster-registration-url → paste.
3. Harvester deploys a cattle-cluster-agent that connects to Rancher.

Now from Rancher you get:

• The Harvester UI embedded as a Rancher extension (manage VMs from Rancher).
• Rancher auth (LDAP/SAML/OIDC) and project-based multi-tenancy applied to Harvester.
• Harvester as an infrastructure provider for RKE2/K3s guest clusters.
• Fleet targeting of the Harvester cluster itself (for VMs-as-code).

19.3 Version compatibility¶

Harvester and Rancher must be in the support matrix together — each Harvester minor lists the Rancher minors it's validated with (and the Rancher UI extension version). Upgrading one without checking the other is the classic cause of "the Harvester page in Rancher is blank" problems.

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