Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) provides a managed confidential computing platform built on Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) hardware encryption. By running workloads inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), your sensitive data and code remain protected from unauthorized access.
Confidential computing clusters are designed for workloads with strict security requirements, such as blockchain and key management.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, ensure that you have:
Activated ACK and authorized it to access other cloud resources. For more information, see Activate and grant permissions to ACK
Limitations
| Resource | Constraint | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Network | ACK clusters support only Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks. | What is a VPC? |
| Elastic Compute Service (ECS) billing | Pay-as-you-go and subscription billing methods are supported. You can change the billing method from pay-as-you-go to subscription in the ECS console after an instance is created. | Change the billing method of an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription |
| VPC route entries | A maximum of 200 route entries can be added to a VPC running Flannel by default. VPCs running Terway are not subject to this limit. To add more route entries, request a quota increase. | Quota Center |
| Security groups | Each account can create up to 100 security groups by default. | View and increase resource quotas |
| Server Load Balancer (SLB) instances | Each account can create up to 60 pay-as-you-go SLB instances by default. | Quota Center |
| Elastic IP Address (EIP) | Each account can create up to 20 EIPs by default. | Quota Center |
Create a confidential computing cluster
Log on to the ACK console. In the left-side navigation pane, click Clusters.
Click Cluster Templates, select Confidential Computing Cluster in the Managed Clusters area, and click Create.
On the ACK Managed Cluster tab, configure the following parameters. Configure the parameters listed in the following table to enable confidential computing. Otherwise, the created cluster cannot run Intel SGX applications. For a full description of all cluster configuration options, see Create an ACK managed cluster.
Intel Ice Lake processors support remote attestation only through Intel SGX Data Center Attestation Primitives (SGX DCAP). Remote attestation based on Intel Enhanced Privacy Identification (EPID) is not supported. Adapt your applications to use SGX DCAP before deploying them. For more information, see Intel attestation services.
Parameter Description Confidential Computing This option is pre-selected when you use the Confidential Computing Cluster template. Keep it enabled. Zone Select a zone that supports security-enhanced instance families: Security-enhanced Compute Optimized Type c7t, Security-enhanced General Purpose Type g7t, and Security-enhanced Memory Optimized Type r7t. Not all zones offer these instance families. To check availability in your target region, see Instance Types Available for Each Region. Container Runtime Select containerd version 1.4.4 or later. Instance Type Select an instance type from one of the following families: Security-enhanced Compute Optimized Type c7t, Security-enhanced General Purpose Type g7t, or Security-enhanced Memory Optimized Type r7t. These families use Intel Xeon (Ice Lake) Platinum 8369B processors with SGX support. Operating System Select Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.xxxx 64-bit (UEFI). Network Plug-in Select Flannel. Flannel is the only network plug-in supported for confidential computing clusters. Complete the remaining configuration as prompted, read and accept the terms of service, and then click Create Cluster.
Verify the result
After you click Create Cluster, cluster provisioning begins. A cluster with multiple nodes takes approximately 10 minutes to create.
To verify that the cluster is ready:
In the ACK console, click Clusters in the left-side navigation pane.
Locate your cluster in the list. When the cluster status changes to Running, the cluster is ready to use.
Next steps
Add a confidential computing node pool: Add a dedicated node pool with TEE-based confidential computing enabled by default. See Create a node pool that supports confidential computing.
Develop and deploy SGX 2.0 applications: Use TEE-SDK to build and deploy Intel SGX 2.0 applications on your confidential computing cluster. See Use TEE SDK to develop and build Intel SGX 2.0 applications.
Enable TDX confidential VMs: Create a node pool that supports Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) confidential VMs to add TDX-based confidential computing to existing clusters. See Create a node pool that supports TDX confidential VMs.
Run Stable Diffusion with CPU acceleration: Use g8i CPU instances to run the Stable Diffusion XL Turbo model with GPU-like performance. See Use CPU acceleration to accelerate Stable Diffusion XL Turbo models for text-to-image inference.