diff --git a/site-modules/profile/manifests/zfs/rancher.pp b/site-modules/profile/manifests/zfs/rancher.pp
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..2f3641fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/site-modules/profile/manifests/zfs/rancher.pp
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+# Handle /var/lib/rancher partition as zfs mountpoint
+# On the vms, to reduce the disk usage and use local storage when the second hard
+# drive is configured to a local storage in terraform
+class profile::zfs::rancher {
+  # as it's for rancher, we consider the zpool['data'] is
+  # already installed by profile::zfs::docker
+  zfs { 'data/rancher':
+    ensure      => present,
+    atime       => 'off',
+    compression => 'zstd',
+    mountpoint  => '/var/lib/rancher',
+    require     => Zpool['data'],
+  }
+}
diff --git a/site-modules/role/manifests/rancher_node.pp b/site-modules/role/manifests/rancher_node.pp
index ccb94f98..046704b6 100644
--- a/site-modules/role/manifests/rancher_node.pp
+++ b/site-modules/role/manifests/rancher_node.pp
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 class role::rancher_node inherits role::swh_base {
   include profile::docker
   include profile::zfs::docker
   include profile::zfs::kubelet
+  include profile::zfs::rancher
   include profile::mountpoints
 }