Prerequisites Step 1: Create a launch template Step 2: Create Kubernetes cluster and node Step 3: Install the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin Step 4: Prepare the image Step 5: Deploy the application to the cluster

Using Nitro Enclaves with Amazon EKS

You can use Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service to orchestrate, scale, and deploy Nitro Enclaves from a Kubernetes pod. Kubernetes is an open source platform for container orchestration. The following diagram provides a conceptual overview of how Nitro Enclaves integrates with Amazon EKS.

Important

All pods and containers in the same Amazon EKS node or Amazon EC2 instance that has the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin installed will be able to communicate with the enclave that is attached to that parent Amazon EC2 instance.

For more information about Amazon EKS see the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service User Guide.

This tutorial shows how to create an Amazon EKS cluster with a managed node group and one enclave-enabled node. It shows how to install the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin, how to prepare the Hello Enclaves sample application for deployment, and how to deploy the prepared Hello Enclaves Docker image to the cluster.

There are two key components to this process:

Launch templates. The process requires a launch template that is properly configured. The launch template must have enclaves enabled and an it must include specific user data that is provided in Step 1: Create a launch template. This launch template will be used to create the enclave-enabled nodes in the cluster.
The Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin. This device plugin gives your pods and containers the ability to create and terminate enclaves using the Nitro Enclaves Command Line Interface. The device plugin works with both Amazon EKS and self-managed Kubernetes nodes.

Tip

To simplify the build process, we also provide an open source tool called enclavectl that you can use to build and deploy your enclave applications to an Amazon EKS cluster. Using enclavectl, you can create an enclave-enabled Amazon EKS cluster and install the Nitro Enclaves device plugin as a daemonset. We also provide some sample applications and a tutorial to demonstrate how to build and run your own enclave applications in an Amazon EKS cluster. For more information about enclavectl, see the Nitro Enclaves with Kubernetes GitHub repo.

Topics

Prerequisites
Step 1: Create a launch template
Step 2: Create Kubernetes cluster and node
Step 3: Install the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin
Step 4: Prepare the image
Step 5: Deploy the application to the cluster

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes familiarity with Kubernetes concepts. For more information, see the Kubernetes documentation.
The following tools are required to complete this tutorial:
- bash shell
- AWS CLI version 2. For more information about installing the AWS CLI, see Getting started with the AWS CLI.
- eksctl, a simple command line tool for creating and managing Kubernetes clusters on Amazon EKS. For more information, see Installing or updating eksctl.
- Docker, an open platform used for packaging your enclave applications into images that can be deployed into containers on your worker nodes. For more information, see Get Docker.
- jq, a command line JSON processor. For more information, see Download jq.
- kubectl version 1.20 and later versions that include the Docker runtime. kubectl is the Kubernetes command line tool that enables you to deploy applications, inspect and manage cluster resources, and view logs. For more information, see Installing or updating kubectl in the Amazon EKS User Guide.

Step 1: Create a launch template

Create a launch template that will be used to launch the enclave-enabled worker nodes (Amazon EC2 instances) in the cluster. You can create the launch template using either the create-launch-template AWS CLI command or the Amazon EC2 console.

When you create the launch template, you must do the following:

Specify a supported instance type.
Enable Nitro Enclaves.
Specify the following user data, which automates the AWS Nitro Enclaves CLI installation, and preallocates the memory and the vCPUs for enclaves on the instance.

The CPU_COUNT and MEMORY_MIB variables in the user data specify the number of vCPUs and amount of memory (in MiB) respectively. For the purpose of this tutorial, the user data below specifies 2 vCPUs and 768 MiB of memory.

Note
You can specify a custom number of vCPUs and amount of memory, depending on your workload and instance type. When you create an enclave on the worker node, the requested memory and vCPUs can't exceed the values that you specified here.
You can also include any other instructions in the user data that are required for your application.
```
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="==MYBOUNDARY=="

--==MYBOUNDARY==
Content-Type: text/x-shellscript; charset="us-ascii"

#!/bin/bash -e
readonly NE_ALLOCATOR_SPEC_PATH="/etc/nitro_enclaves/allocator.yaml"
# Node resources that will be allocated for Nitro Enclaves
readonly CPU_COUNT=2
readonly MEMORY_MIB=768

# This step below is needed to install nitro-enclaves-allocator service.
amazon-linux-extras install aws-nitro-enclaves-cli -y

# Update enclave's allocator specification: allocator.yaml
sed -i "s/cpu_count:.*/cpu_count: $CPU_COUNT/g" $NE_ALLOCATOR_SPEC_PATH
sed -i "s/memory_mib:.*/memory_mib: $MEMORY_MIB/g" $NE_ALLOCATOR_SPEC_PATH
# Restart the nitro-enclaves-allocator service to take changes effect.
systemctl restart nitro-enclaves-allocator.service
echo "NE user data script has finished successfully."
--==MYBOUNDARY==
```
Note
If you create the launch template using the AWS CLI, you must provide the user data as base64-encoded text.
Note the launch template ID (for example, lt-01234567890abcdef; you'll need it in the following step.

For more information about creating a launch template, see Create a launch template in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Step 2: Create Kubernetes cluster and node

Create the cluster with node groups and worker nodes. In this tutorial, we use the eksctl command line tool to create an Amazon EKS cluster with one managed node group with one worker node using the launch template created in the previous step.

To create the cluster, node group, and worker node

Create a cluster configuration file named cluster_config.yaml and add the following configuration, which specifies the following:
- The name of the cluster (metadata:name)
- The AWS Region in which to create the cluster (region)
- The name of the node group (managedNodeGroups:name)
- The ID and version of the launch template to use to create the worker nodes (id and version)
- The number of nodes in the node group (desiredCapacity)
For the purpose of this tutorial, the configuration file creates a cluster named ne-cluster in us-east-1, it creates 1 node in a node group named ne-group using version 1 of launch template lt-01234567890abcdef.
```
apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig

metadata:
  name: ne-cluster
  region: us-east-1
  version: "1.30"

managedNodeGroups:
  - name: ne-group
    launchTemplate:
      id: lt-01234567890abcdef
      version: "1"
    desiredCapacity: 1
```
For more information about cluster configuration files, see Using Config Files in the eksctl documentation.
Create the cluster, node group, and worker node using the cluster configuration file. Run the following eksctl command and specify the cluster configuration file created in the previous step.
```
$ eksctl create cluster -f cluster_config.yaml
```
After the cluster is created, you will see output similar to the following.
```
...
[✓]  EKS cluster "ne-cluster" in us-east-1 region is ready
```

Note

When you create an Amazon EKS cluster using eksctl, the tool automatically preconfigures kubectl so that it can find and access the Amazon EKS cluster. If you create a self-managed cluster using other tooling, you might need to manually configure kubectl so that it can communicate with your cluster. To check the kubectl configuration, run kubectl cluster-info. If you see a URL response, kubectl is correctly configured to access your cluster. For more information, see Organizing Cluster Access Using kubeconfig Files in the Kubernetes documentation.

Step 3: Install the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin

Deploy the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin to the cluster and then enable it on each worker node in the cluster using kubectl. The plugin enables the pods on each worker node to access the Nitro Enclaves device driver. The plugin is deployed to the Kubernetes cluster as a daemonset.

To deploy and enable the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin

Deploy the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin to the cluster using the following command.


$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aws/aws-nitro-enclaves-k8s-device-plugin/main/aws-nitro-enclaves-k8s-ds.yaml

Get the name of the worker node on which to install the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin using the following command.


$ kubectl get nodes

The following is example output.


NAME                                            STATUS  ROLES  AGE  VERSION
ip-123-123-123-123.us-east-1.compute.internal   Ready   <none> 21h  v1.30.15-eks-fb459a0

Enable the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin on the worker node. Use the following kubectl command and specify the node name from the previous step.


$ kubectl label node node_name aws-nitro-enclaves-k8s-dp=enabled

For example:


$ kubectl label node ip-123-123-123-123.us-east-1.compute.internal aws-nitro-enclaves-k8s-dp=enabled

Step 4: Prepare the image

Nitro Enclaves uses Docker images as a convenient file format for packaging your applications. You must build the Docker image that includes your enclave application and any other commands that are needed to run the application. This Docker image will be deployed to the worker node in the following step.

AWS provides a command line tool, enclavectl that automates the steps that are needed to build an enclave image file and to package your enclave image file into a Docker image. Additionally, the tool includes features that automate Amazon EKS cluster and node group creation, and application deployment. For an end-to-end tutorial on how to use the enclavectl tool to automate cluster creation, application packaging, and application deployment, see the aws-nitro-enclaves-with-k8s readme file.

Note

You can also perform these steps manually using Docker and the Nitro CLI. For more information, see Building an enclave image file.

In this tutorial, we use the enclavectl tool to package the Hello Enclaves sample application into a Docker image.

To prepare the image

The enclavectl utility can be found in the aws-nitro-enclaves-with-k8s GitHub repo. Clone the GitHub repo and navigate into the directory.
```
$ git clone git@github.com:aws/aws-nitro-enclaves-with-k8s.git && cd aws-nitro-enclaves-with-k8s
```
Source the env.sh script to add the enclavectl tool to you PATH variable.
```
$ source env.sh
```
Configure the enclavectl for the tutorial. The settings.json file includes some default parameters that are used only if you create a cluster using enclavectl. Since the cluster was created manually in the previous steps, the parameters in the settings.json are not used; but you must run this command to configure the tool before using it.
```
$ enclavectl configure --file settings.json
```
Build the Hello Enclaves enclave image file and package it into a Docker image. The required files are located in the /container/hello directory. Use the enclavectl build command and specify the name of the directory.
```
$ enclavectl build --image hello
```
Tip
You can also use the enclavectl tool to package your own enclave applications into a Docker image. To do this, you must create a new directory with the name of your application in the /container directory. For example, /aws-nitro-enclaves-with-k8s/container/my-app. Then, you must create your Dockerfile and an enclave_manifest.json file in this directory. Then, when you run the enclavectl build command, for --image specify the name of the directory that you created. For example, enclavectl build --image my-app.
For more information about how to use the enclavectl tool to package you applications, see How to create your own application
The Docker image is created with a name in the following format: hello-unique_uuid. To view the full name of the image, run the following command.
```
$ docker image ls | grep hello
```

Step 5: Deploy the application to the cluster

Finally, you need to deploy the application to your cluster.

To deploy the application to the cluster

Create a deployment specification. Create a new file named deployment_spec.yaml and add the following content.


apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: unique_deployment_name
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: application_name
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: application_name
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: unique container_name
        image: docker_image_name:image_tag
        command: ["docker_image_entry_point"]
        resources:
          limits:
            aws.ec2.nitro/nitro_enclaves: "1"
            hugepages-2Mi: 768Mi
            cpu: 250m
          requests:
            aws.ec2.nitro/nitro_enclaves: "1"
            hugepages-2Mi: 768Mi
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /dev/hugepages
          name: hugepage
          readOnly: false
      volumes:
      - name: hugepage-2mi
        emptyDir:
          medium: HugePages-2Mi
      - name: hugepage-1gi
        emptyDir:
          medium: HugePages-1Gi
      tolerations:
      - effect: NoSchedule
        operator: Exists
      - effect: NoExecute
        operator: Exists

The deployment specification must include the following Nitro Enclaves specific sections:

```
limits:
  aws.ec2.nitro/nitro_enclaves: "1"
  hugepages-2Mi: 768Mi
```
The limits section defines the resource limits for the container. A container can't use more resources than what is defined in the limits. For more information, see Requests and limits.

aws.ec2.nitro/nitro_enclaves is the resource name of the enclaves device driver defined in the device plugin. When the device plugin is registered, it advertises this name to kubelet. The resource name can be requested as part of a specification any time. In the template above, we specify 1 so that only one application can use the enclaves device driver at the same time. You can modify this value depending on your requirements.

hugepages specifies the huge page size limit for your application. Nitro Enclaves uses large contiguous memory regions and therefore requires huge pages support. In the template above, the huge page size limit for the application is set to 768 MiB of memory. Keep in mind that the nitro-enclaves-allocator service, which was installed to the node through the user data specified in the launch template, already allocated a huge page size based the value specified for MEMORY_MIB in the user data. For example, if the value for MEMORY_MIB in the user data is 1024, the nitro-enclaves allocator allocated one page of 1 GiB huge page type for the whole node. In this case, the field in the deployment spec be defined as hugepages-1Gi: 1Gi.

For more information, see Managing huge pages.
```
requests:
  aws.ec2.nitro/nitro_enclaves: "1"
  hugepages-2Mi: 768Mi
```
The requests section is used to define the node on which to place the pod For more information, see Requests and limits.

In the template above, we request a pod that has one enclave device (aws.ec2.nitro/nitro_enclaves: "1"), and a huge page size of 768 MiB ( hugepages-2Mi: 768Mi).

The following is an example deployment specification for the Hello Enclaves application created in the previous steps.


apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: hello_deployment
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: hello
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: hello
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: hello_container
        image: 123456789012.dkr.ecr.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/hello-b0f89e0a-7d83-4928-853c-9a3f941fa769:latest
        command: ["/home/run.sh"]
        resources:
          limits:
            aws.ec2.nitro/nitro_enclaves: "1"
            hugepages-2Mi: 768Mi
            cpu: 250m
          requests:
            aws.ec2.nitro/nitro_enclaves: "1"
            hugepages-2Mi: 768Mi
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /dev/hugepages
          name: hugepage
          readOnly: false
      volumes:
      - name: hugepage
        emptyDir:
          medium: HugePages-2Mi
      tolerations:
      - effect: NoSchedule
        operator: Exists
      - effect: NoExecute
        operator: Exists

Apply the deployment specification to the cluster and deploy the application. Use the kubectl apply command and specify the deployment specification file.
```
$ kubectl apply -f deployment_spec.yaml
```
Tip
The enclavectl tool automates and simplifies the steps required to deploy an application to a cluster. You can use the enclavectl run --image image_name command to automatically generate a deployment specification for your application and to automatically deploy it to your cluster. For example, enclavectl run --image hello. If you prefer automatically generate a deployment specification for your application, but deploy it manually, add the --prepare-only flag. For example, enclavectl run --image hello --prepare-only. Doing this will generate the deployment specification but it will not deploy the application to the cluster. Once the deployment specification has been generated, you can deploy the application using the kubectl apply command.

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