Deploying a pod as a Nitro Enclave

The previous sections were all about setting up an AWS EKS cluster with the Anjuna Nitro Kubernetes tools installed in the cluster. You are now able to start a container in a Nitro Enclave without changing the container, and verify that it is in fact running in an enclave. In this section you will load a simple nginx container in an enclave.

Run the following command:

$ kubectl apply -f workspace/specs/nitro-nginx.yaml

Wait for the pod to start by running the command until the pod is running:

$ kubectl get pods

When the pod is running, run the following command to see what the pod did:

$ kubectl logs nitro-nginx-pod

Inspecting the logs, you will see that the pod nitro-nginx-pod is:

  • downloading the nginx container,

  • converting it into an EIF (enclave image file) using the Anjuna Nitro Runtime,

  • configuring the networking settings using the Anjuna Nitro Runtime,

  • stating the enclave in debug mode,

  • showing the Nitro console output, which indicates that nginx should have started.

To confirm that nginx is in fact running, you can connect to the pod, and issue a curl to verify that nginx is responding to requests.

$ kubectl exec -it nitro-nginx-pod -- /bin/bash

This command starts a bash interpreter on the nitro-nginx-pod. You should see a prompt like this:

bash-4.2#

Enter the following command to make a request to nginx:

# curl localhost

which should display a welcome page from nginx.

To confirm that the nginx process is not running in this pod, run the following command:

# ps -ef | grep nginx

The output should show that no process named nginx is running (although there is a process that started the Nitro Enclave).

You can exit the bash session on the pod:

# exit

How does this work?

To understand how the Anjuna Nitro Kubernetes tools are told to create an enclave, you have to inspect the pod specification used for nginx. Open the file workspace/specs/nitro-nginx.yaml.

 1      -
 2      apiVersion: v1
 3      kind: Service
 4      metadata:
 5        name: nitro-nginx
 6      spec:
 7        selector:
 8          name: nitro-nginx-pod
 9        ports:
10           - protocol: TCP
11           port: 80
12           targetPort: 80
13      -
14      apiVersion: v1
15      kind: Pod
16      metadata:
17        name: nitro-nginx-pod
18        labels:
19          name: nitro-nginx-pod
20          nitro.k8s.anjuna.io/managed: "yes"
21      spec:
22        containers:
23        - name: nitro-nginx-pod
24          image: nginx:latest
25          imagePullPolicy: Always
26          resources:
27            limits:
28              memory: "2048Mi"
29              cpu: "2"
30          ports:
31            - containerPort: 80

  • Lines 14-19: Declare that a pod nitro-nginx-pod will be created.

  • Line 20: Declares that this pod should be running in a Nitro Enclave by using the nitro.k8s.anjuna.io/managed label.

  • Line 24: The pod should launch the container nginx:latest in the Nitro Enclave.

  • Lines 26-29: Declare the resources that should be allocated to the enclave ( number of CPUs, RAM).

All pod configured volumes are automatically mounted into the enclave using a bind mount.