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# Confidential Containers | ||
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Contrast uses some building blocks from [Confidential Containers](https://confidentialcontainers.org) (CoCo), a [CNCF Sandbox project](https://www.cncf.io/projects/confidential-containers/) that aims to standardize confidential computing at the pod level. | ||
The project is under active development and many of the high-level features are still in flux. | ||
Contrast uses the more stable, core primitive provided by CoCo: its Kubernetes runtime. | ||
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## Kubernetes RuntimeClass | ||
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Kubernetes can be extended to use more than one container runtime with [`RuntimeClass`](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/containers/runtime-class/) objects. | ||
The [Container Runtime Interface](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/architecture/cri/) (CRI) implementation, for example containerd, dispatches pod management API calls to the appropriate `RuntimeClass`. | ||
`RuntimeClass` implementations are usually based on an [OCI runtime](https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec), such as `runc`, `runsc` or `crun`. | ||
In CoCo's case, the runtime is Kata Containers with added confidential computing capabilities. | ||
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## Kata Containers | ||
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[Kata Containers](https://katacontainers.io/) is an OCI runtime that runs pods in VMs. | ||
The guest VM spawns an agent process that accepts management commands from the Kata runtime running on the host. | ||
There are two options for creating pod VMs: local to the Kubernetes node, or remote VMs created with cloud provider APIs. | ||
Using local VMs requires either bare metal servers or VMs with support for nested virtualization. | ||
Local VMs communicate with the host over a virtual socket. | ||
For remote VMs, host-to-agent communication is tunnelled through the cloud provider's network. | ||
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Kata Containers was originally designed to isolate the guest from the host, but it can also run pods in confidential VMs (CVMs) to shield pods from their underlying infrastructure. | ||
In confidential mode, the guest agent is configured with an [Open Policy Agent](https://www.openpolicyagent.org/) (OPA) policy to authorize API calls from the host. | ||
This policy also contains checksums for the expected container images. | ||
It's derived from Kubernetes resource definitions and its checksum is included in the attestation report. | ||
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## AKS CoCo Preview | ||
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[Azure Kubernetes Service](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/) (AKS) provides CoCo-enabled node pools as a [preview offering](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/confidential-containers-overview). | ||
These node pools leverage Azure VM types capable of nested virtualization (CVM-in-VM) and the CoCo stack is pre-installed. | ||
Contrast can be deployed directly into a CoCo-enabled AKS cluster. |