Encrypt workload data in-use with Confidential Google Kubernetes Engine Nodes

This page shows you how to enforce encryption of data in-use in your nodes and workloads by using Confidential Google Kubernetes Engine Nodes. Enforcing encryption can help increase the security of your workloads.

This page is for Security specialists who implement security measures on GKE. To learn more about common roles and example tasks that we reference in Google Cloud content, see Common GKE Enterprise user roles and tasks.

Before reading this page, ensure that you're familiar with the concept of data-in-use.

Overview

You can encrypt your workloads with Confidential GKE Nodes or Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced.

Confidential GKE Nodes

Confidential GKE Nodes is built on top of Compute Engine Confidential VM using AMD Secure Encryption Virtualization (SEV), which encrypts the memory contents of VMs in-use. Encryption-in-use is one of the three states of end-to-end encryption.

When you enable Confidential GKE Nodes on a cluster or on a node pool, data in workloads running on the confidential nodes is encrypted-in-use. For visibility over your control plane, use Access Transparency.

You can enable Confidential GKE Nodes when doing one of the following:

  • Create a new cluster
  • Create a new node pool
  • Update an existing node pool

You cannot update an existing cluster to change the cluster-level Confidential GKE Nodes setting.

The following table shows you the GKE behavior that applies when you enable Confidential GKE Nodes at the cluster level or at the node pool level:

Confidential GKE Nodes setting How to configure Behavior
Cluster-level Create a new cluster All nodes in the cluster in any node pool use Confidential GKE Nodes. You cannot do the following:
  • Disable Confidential GKE Nodes for a new or existing node pool in the cluster
  • Disable Confidential GKE Nodes on the cluster
  • Enable Confidential GKE Nodes on existing clusters
Node pool level
  • Create a new node pool
  • Update an existing node pool
 You can only configure Confidential GKE Nodes for node pools when this feature is disabled at the cluster-level.

Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced

You can also enable Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced on your boot disk storage which encrypts your data on additional hardware-backed enclaves.

You can enable Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced when doing one of the following:

  • Create a new cluster
  • Create a new node pool

You cannot update an existing cluster or a node pool to change the Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting.

The following table shows you the GKE behavior that applies when you enable Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting at the cluster level or at the node pool level:

Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting How to configure Behavior
Cluster-level Create a new cluster Only the default node pool in the cluster will use Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting. You cannot do the following:
  • Disable Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting for an existing node pool in the cluster
  • Enable Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting on existing clusters
Node pool level Create a new node pool You can configure Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting for any new node pools at creation time. You can't update existing node pools to use Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting.

Pricing

There is no additional cost to deploy Confidential GKE Nodes, other than the cost of Compute Engine Confidential VM. However, Confidential GKE Nodes might generate slightly more log data on startup than standard nodes. For information on logs pricing, see Pricing for Google Cloud Observability.

Availability

Confidential GKE Nodes is available in the following situations:

Before you begin

Before you start, make sure you have performed the following tasks:

  • Enable the Google Kubernetes Engine API.
    • Enable Google Kubernetes Engine API
  • If you want to use the Google Cloud CLI for this task, install and then initialize the gcloud CLI. If you previously installed the gcloud CLI, get the latest version by running gcloud components update.

Enable Confidential GKE Nodes on clusters

You can create a new cluster with Confidential GKE Nodes enabled by using the gcloud CLI or the Google Cloud console. If you enable Confidential GKE Nodes at the cluster level, all the nodes in the cluster are Confidential VM.

gcloud

When creating a new cluster, specify the --enable-confidential-nodes option in the gcloud CLI:

gcloud container clusters create CLUSTER_NAME \
    --machine-type=MACHINE_TYPE \
    --enable-confidential-nodes

Replace the following:

  • CLUSTER_NAME: the name of your new cluster.
  • MACHINE_TYPE: the machine type for your cluster's default node pool, which must be the N2D, C2D, or C3D machine type.

Console

  1. Go to the Google Kubernetes Engine page in the Google Cloud console.

    Go to Google Kubernetes Engine

  2. Click Create.

  3. In the Standard section, click Configure.

  4. From the navigation pane, under Cluster, click Security.

  5. Select the Enable Confidential GKE Nodes checkbox.

  6. Configure your cluster as needed.

  7. Click Create.

See Creating a regional cluster for more details about creating clusters.

After creating a cluster with Confidential GKE Nodes, any node pools created in this cluster can only use confidential nodes. You cannot create regular node pools in clusters with Confidential GKE Nodes enabled. You also cannot disable Confidential GKE Nodes on individual node pools when you enable Confidential GKE Nodes at the cluster level.

For any node pool created with the Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting, only the nodes in the node pool are restricted to the setup configuration. For any new node pools created in the cluster, you must set up confidential mode at creation.

Enable Confidential GKE Nodes on node pools

You can enable Confidential GKE Nodes on specific node pools if Confidential GKE Nodes is disabled at the cluster level.

Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting must be specified during node pool creation request.

Create a new node pool

To create a new node pool with Confidential GKE Nodes enabled, run the following command:

gcloud container node-pools create NODE_POOL_NAME \
    --cluster=CLUSTER_NAME \
    --machine-type=MACHINE_TYPE \
    --enable-confidential-nodes

Replace the following:

  • NODE_POOL_NAME: the name of your new node pool.
  • CLUSTER_NAME: the name of your cluster.
  • MACHINE_TYPE: the machine type for your node pool, which must be a N2D, C2D, or C3D machine type.

Update an existing node pool

You can enable Confidential GKE Nodes on existing node pools that use the N2D, C2D, or C3D machine types. Run the following command:

gcloud container node-pools update NODE_POOL_NAME \
    --cluster=CLUSTER_NAME \
    --enable-confidential-nodes

Replace the following:

  • NODE_POOL_NAME: the name of your node pool.
  • CLUSTER_NAME: the name of your cluster.

This change requires recreating the nodes, which can cause disruption to your running workloads. For details about this specific change, find the corresponding row in the manual changes that recreate the nodes using a node upgrade strategy without respecting maintenance policies table. To learn more about node updates, see Planning for node update disruptions.

Verify that Confidential GKE Nodes are enabled

On clusters

You can verify that your cluster is using Confidential GKE Nodes with the gcloud CLI or the Google Cloud console.

gcloud

Describe the cluster:

gcloud container clusters describe CLUSTER_NAME

If Confidential GKE Nodes is enabled, the output of the command includes the following lines:

confidentialNodes:
  enabled: true

Console

  1. Go to the Google Kubernetes Engine page in the Google Cloud console.

    Go to Google Kubernetes Engine

  2. Click the name of the cluster you want to inspect.

  3. Under Security, in the Confidential GKE Nodes field, verify that Confidential GKE Nodes is Enabled.

On node pools

To verify that your node pool is using Confidential GKE Nodes, run the following command:

gcloud container node-pools describe NODE_POOL_NAME \
    --cluster=CLUSTER_NAME

If Confidential GKE Nodes is enabled, the output is similar to the following:

confidentialNodes:
  enabled: true

If Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced setting is enabled, the output is similar to the following:

enableConfidentialStorage: true

On nodes

To validate the confidentiality of specific nodes, you can:

  1. Validate AMD SEV is enabled, or
  2. Validate Confidential VM using Cloud Monitoring.

Run applications on Confidential GKE Nodes

Google's approach to Confidential Computing is to enable an effortless lift and shift for existing applications. GKE workloads that you run today can run on Confidential GKE Nodes without code changes.

Optionally, if you want to declaratively express that your workloads must only run on clusters with Confidential GKE Nodes, you can use the cloud.google.com/gke-confidential-nodes node selector. Here's an example Pod spec that uses this selector:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: my-confidential-app
    image: us-docker.pkg.dev/myproject/myrepo/my-confidential-app
  nodeSelector:
    cloud.google.com/gke-confidential-nodes: "true"

Set organization policy constraints

You can define an organization policy constraint to ensure that all VM resources created across your organization are Confidential VM instances. For GKE, you can customize the Restrict Non-Confidential Computing constraint to require that all new clusters are created with Confidential GKE Nodes enabled. Add the container.googleapis.com API Service name to the deny list when enforcing organization policy constraints, for example:

gcloud resource-manager org-policies deny \
    constraints/compute.restrictNonConfidentialComputing compute.googleapis.com container.googleapis.com \
    --project=PROJECT_ID

Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

Create a PersistentVolume for Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced

For guidance on allowable values for throughput or IOPS, see Plan the performance level for your Hyperdisk volume.

The following examples show how you can create a Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced StorageClass for each Hyperdisk type:

Hyperdisk Balanced

  1. Save the following manifest in a file named confidential-hdb-example-class.yaml:

    apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: balanced-storage
provisioner: pd.csi.storage.gke.io
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
allowVolumeExpansion: true
parameters:
  type: hyperdisk-balanced
  provisioned-throughput-on-create: "250Mi"
  provisioned-iops-on-create: "7000"
  enable-confidential-storage: true
  disk-encryption-kms-key: "projects/KMS_PROJECT_ID/locations/REGION/keyRings/KEY_RING/cryptoKeys/HSM_KEY_NAME"

    Replace the following:

    • KMS_PROJECT_ID: the project that owns the Cloud KMS key
    • REGION: the region where the disk is located
    • KEY_RING: the name of the key ring that includes the key
    • HSM_KEY_NAME: the name of the HSM key used to encrypt the disk

  2. Create the StorageClass:

    kubectl create -f hdb-example-class.yaml

  3. Create a Hyperdisk Persistent Volume Claim for GKE that uses your Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced volume.

To find the name of the StorageClasses available in your cluster, run the following command:

kubectl get sc

Limitations

Confidential GKE Nodes has the following limitations:

Live migration limitations

Certain Compute Engine Confidential VM machine types support live migration, which minimizes the potential workload disruption from a host maintenance event. Live migration occurs in the following GKE versions:

  • 1.27.10-gke.1218000 and later
  • 1.28.6-gke.1393000 and later
  • 1.29.1-gke.1621000 and later

If your node pools were already running a supported version when live migration was added, manually upgrade the node pools to the same or a different supported version. Upgrading the nodes triggers node recreation, and the new nodes have live migration enabled.

For details about which Compute Engine machine types support live migration, see Supported configurations.

If a host maintenance event occurs on a node that doesn't support live migration, the node enters a NotReady state. Running Pods will experience disruptions until the node becomes ready again. If the maintenance takes more than five minutes, GKE might try to recreate the Pods on other nodes.

Disable Confidential GKE Nodes

Disabling Confidential GKE Nodes only works for node pools that have enabled Confidential GKE Nodes. If the cluster is created with Confidential GKE Nodes, you cannot disable the feature. Run the following command to disable Confidential GKE Nodes on a node pool:

gcloud container node-pools update NODE_POOL_NAME \
    --cluster=CLUSTER_NAME \
    --no-enable-confidential-nodes

This change requires recreating the nodes, which can cause disruption to your running workloads. For details about this specific change, find the corresponding row in the manual changes that recreate the nodes using a node upgrade strategy without respecting maintenance policies table. To learn more about node updates, see Planning for node update disruptions.

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