Always Encrypted Kubernetes

[!IMPORTANT] Constellation is no longer actively maintained by Edgeless Systems.

This project is no longer receiving updates or support from Edgeless Systems. The repository remains available for archival purposes and community use. New development continues in Contrast, which provides workload-level confidential computing using Confidential Containers. 👉 https://github.com/edgelesssys/contrast

Constellation is a Kubernetes engine that aims to provide the best possible data security. It wraps your K8s cluster into a single confidential context that is shielded from the underlying cloud infrastructure. Everything inside is always encrypted, including at runtime in memory. For this, Constellation leverages confidential computing (see the whitepaper) and more specifically Confidential VMs.

Goals

From a security perspective, Constellation is designed to keep all data always encrypted and to prevent access from the infrastructure layer (i.e., remove the infrastructure from the TCB). This includes access from datacenter employees, privileged cloud admins, and attackers coming through the infrastructure (e.g., malicious co-tenants escalating their privileges).

From a DevOps perspective, Constellation is designed to work just like what you would expect from a modern K8s engine.

Use cases

Encrypting your K8s is good for:

• Increasing the overall security of your clusters
• Increasing the trustworthiness of your SaaS offerings
• Moving sensitive workloads from on-prem to the cloud
• Meeting regulatory requirements

Features

🔒 Everything always encrypted

• Runtime encryption: All nodes run inside Confidential VMs (CVMs) based on AMD SEV or Intel TDX.
• Transparent encryption of network: All pod-to-pod traffic is automatically encrypted
• Transparent encryption of storage: All writes to persistent storage are automatically encrypted. This includes nodes' state disks, persistent volumes via CSI, and S3 object storage.
• Transparent key management: All cryptographic keys are managed within the confidential context

🔍 Everything verifiable

• "Whole cluster" attestation based on the remote-attestation feature of CVMs
• Confidential computing-optimized node images; fully measured and integrity-protected
• Supply chain protection with sigstore and SLSA Level 3.

🚀 Performance and scale

• High availability with multi-master architecture and stacked etcd topology
• Dynamic cluster autoscaling with verification and secure bootstrapping of new nodes
• Competitive performance

🧩 Easy to use and integrate

• Constellation is a CNCF-certified Kubernetes. It's aligned to Kubernetes' version support policy and will likely work with your existing workloads and tools.
• Support for AWS, Azure, GCP, and STACKIT.
• Support for local installations with MiniConstellation.
• Support for Terraform

Getting started

If you're already familiar with Kubernetes, it's easy to get started with Constellation:

1. 📦 Install the CLI or use the Terraform provider
2. ⌨️ Create a Constellation cluster in the cloud or locally
3. 🏎️ Run your app

Learn more: "Getting started with Constellation" videos series.

Documentation

To learn more, see the documentation. You may want to start with one of the following sections.

• Confidential Kubernetes (Constellation vs. AKS/GKE + CVMs)
• Security benefits
• Architecture

Support

• If something doesn't work, make sure to use the latest release and check out the known issues.
• Please file an issue to get help or report a bug.
• Join the GitHub discussions if you have questions or would like to discuss an idea.
• Visit our blog for technical deep-dives and tutorials and follow us on LinkedIn for news.
• Edgeless Systems also offers Enterprise Support.

Contributing

Refer to CONTRIBUTING.md on how to contribute. The most important points:

• Pull requests are welcome! You need to agree to our Contributor License Agreement.
• Please follow the Code of Conduct.

Warning Please report any security issue via a private GitHub vulnerability report or write to security@edgeless.systems.

License

Constellation is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1. You may use it free of charge for non-production use. You can find more information in the license section of the docs.