Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service with Fortanix Confidential Computing Manager

  • Updated on Jul 23, 2025
  • Published on Jun 12, 2024
  • 7 minute(s) read
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1.0 Introduction

This article describes how to set up an Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS ) cluster as worker nodes in Fortanix Confidential Computing Manager (CCM). 

1.1 Prerequisites

Ensure that you meet the following requirements:

  • Ensure that you must have an active AWS subscription.

  • The worker nodes of the EKS cluster should be of type i3en.xlarge or larger.

  • You must have an EKS cluster created.

2.0 Set Up Amazon EKS Cluster

Ensure that you establish an Amazon EKS cluster and nodes while installing the Nitro Enclaves Kubernetes device plugin. For more information on the procedures and steps, refer to the AWS documentation.

You must increase the memory of HughPages. Update the value of memory_mib parameter to 2560 in /etc/nitro_enclaves/allocator.yaml file:

---
# Enclave configuration file.
#
# How much memory to allocate for enclaves (in MiB).
memory_mib: 2560
#
# How many CPUs to reserve for enclaves.
cpu_count: 2

NOTE

Ensure that the total enclave memory required on a node is 512 MB for the em-agent node and the enclave memory your application requires.

Restart the worker node to reflect the changes:

reboot

3.0 Get Kubernetes Credentials

Perform the following steps to obtain Kubernetes credentials (kubeconfig), enabling seamless interaction with the configured cluster for effective management and deployment:

  1. Run the following command to get kubeconfig:

    eksctl utils write-kubeconfig --cluster=<cluster_name>

    OR

    aws eks --region us-west-1 update-kubeconfig --name <cluster-name>

  2. Run the following command to label all the nodes with Nitro Enclave OS capabilities:

    kubectl label node <node-name> smarter-device-manager=enabled

    NOTE

    Ensure that you use private IP Domain Name System (DNS) name of the nodes.

  3. Run the following command to label all the nodes with enclave.example.com/type=nitro:

    kubectl label node <node-name> enclave.example.com/type=nitro

  4. Run the following command to install the Smarter Device Manager on the Kubernetes cluster:

    kubectl label node <node-name> enclave.example.com/type=nitro

    NOTE

    You can find the YAML configuration file for the smarter-device-manager in https://smarter-device-manager-ds-with-cm.yaml. Ensure that you update the value for nummaxdevices parameter to a higher value than 1, such as 10.

  5. Run the following command to install Smart Device Manager:

    kubectl apply -f smarter-device-manager-ds-with-cm.yaml

4.0 Provide AWS CCM User Access to Your EKS Cluster 

Perform the following steps to provide AWS CCM access to you EKS cluster:

  1. Run the following command to update the aws-auth configmap:

     kubectl edit -n kube-system configmap/aws-auth

  2. Add the following changes into the configmap file:

    mapUsers: |

    - userarn: arn:aws:iam::513076507034:user/em-admin@fortanix.com

    username: em-admin@fortanix.com

    groups:

    - system:masters

The specified value assumes that the credentials associated with em-admin@fortanix.com are set up as eks_config in Fortanix CCM clusters.

5.0 Creating the Secrets

Perform the following steps to create a Kubernetes secret for the cluster :

  1. Run the following command to create a secret to access the ECR registry:

    kubectl create secret docker-registry regcred   --docker-server=513076507034.dkr.ecr.us-west-1.amazonaws.com   --docker-username=AWS --docker-password=$(aws ecr get-login-password)

    NOTE

    You must skip this step if the image is in a public repository.

  2. Obtain the join token from Fortanix CCM UI and store it as a Kubernetes secret in your cluster. To generate your join token, log in to https://ccm.fortanix.com/.

  3. Click the Infrastructure → Compute Nodes menu item in the Fortanix CCM UI and click + ENROLL NODE to bring up the join token dialog.

  4. In the ENROLL NODE window, a join token will be generated in the text box for "Get a join token to register a compute node". This join token is used by the compute node to authenticate itself.

  5. Click Copy to copy the join token .

  6. Run the following command to store the join token as a Kubernetes secret for the cluster. Replace the <join-token-from-account> value below with your token.

    kubectl create secret generic em-token --from-literal=token=<join-token-from-account>

6.0 Installing Node Agent

Perform the following steps to install the node agent on your Kubernetes cluster:

  1. Run the following command to install the node agent as daemonset:

    kubectl apply -f agent-daemonset.yaml

    The following is the content for the agent-daemonset.yaml file:

    apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: em-agent
  namespace: default
  labels:
    component: em-agent
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      component: em-agent
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        component: em-agent
    spec:
      hostNetwork: true
      dnsPolicy: ClusterFirstWithHostNet
      volumes:
      - name: hugepage
        emptyDir:
          medium: HugePages
      - name: log
        hostPath:
          path: /var/log/nitro_enclaves
      - name: socket-path
        emptyDir: {}
      - name: node-data
        hostPath:
          path: /tmp/em-agent-nitro
      containers:
      - name: em-agent
        image: "fortanix/em-agent-nitro:latest"
        resources:
          limits:
            smarter-devices/nitro_enclaves: "1"
            hugepages-2Mi: 512Mi
            memory: 2Gi
            cpu: 250m
          requests:
            smarter-devices/nitro_enclaves: "1"
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /dev/hugepages
          name: hugepage
          readOnly: false
        - name: log
          mountPath: /var/log/nitro_enclaves
        - name: socket-path
          mountPath: /run/nitro_enclaves
        - name: node-data
          mountPath: /tmp/em-agent-nitro
        ports:
        - containerPort: 9092
          name: http
          protocol: TCP
          hostPort: 9092
        env:
        - name: AGENT_MANAGER_AUTH_BASIC_TOKEN
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: em-token
              key: token
        - name: MANAGER_ENDPOINT
          value: "ccm.test.fortanix.com"
        - name: MALBORK_LOG_DEBUG
          value: "true"
        - name: NODE_IP
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: status.hostIP
        - name: NODE_NAME
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: spec.nodeName

  2. Run the following command to verify the deployment of the Fortanix CCM Nitro Node Agent DaemonSets by confirming the operational status of the node agent pod:

    kubectl get pods
NAME             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
em-agent-fqp8j   1/1     Running   0          30m

NOTE

The node agent tag is available at https://hub.docker.com/r/fortanix/em-agent-nitro/tags.

7.0 Reinstalling Node Agent in a Different Account

Perform the following steps for installing the node agent in an account and switching it to a different account:

  1. Run the following command to delete the /tmp/em-agent-nitro parameter from each worker nodes:

    # log into the node through debug container.
$ kubectl debug node/ -it --image=busybox
# inside container now run chroot to access the node.
$ chroot /host bash
# Delete the file
$ rm -rf /tmp/em-agent-nitro
# Exit twice to get out of the container
$ exit

  2. Run the following command to create a new em-token secret:

    $ kubectl delete secret em-token
$ kubectl create secret generic em-token --from-literal=token=<join-token-from-account>

  3. Run the following command to restart the em-agent secret:

    $ kubectl rollout restart ds em-agent

8.0 Converting Nitro Enclave OS Application

For more information on how to create an application in Fortanix CCM, refer to the User's Guide: Create an Image.

8.1 Creating NGINX Deployment

The following is the content of app-development.yaml file:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-pod
  labels:
    app: my-pod
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-pod
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: my-pod
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: nginx:latest
        ports:
        - name: http
          containerPort: 80
        imagePullPolicy: Always
        securityContext:
          privileged: true
        resources:
          limits:
            smarter-devices/nitro_enclaves: "1"
            hugepages-1Gi: 2Gi
            memory: 2Gi
            cpu: 250m
          requests:
            smarter-devices/nitro_enclaves: "1"
            hugepages-1Gi: 2Gi
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /dev/hugepages
          name: hugepage
          readOnly: false
        - name: log
          mountPath: /var/log/nitro_enclaves
        - name: socket-path
          mountPath: /run/nitro_enclaves
        env:
        - name: NODE_IP
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: status.hostIP
        - name: NODE_AGENT
          value: http://$(NODE_IP):9092/v1/
        - name: RUST_LOG
          value: debug
      volumes:
      - name: hugepage
        emptyDir:
          medium: HugePages
      - name: log
        hostPath:
          path: /var/log/nitro_enclaves
      - name: socket-path
        emptyDir: {}

Update the container's image details to run any other image. Run the following command to deploy the application:

kubectl apply -f app-deployment.yaml

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