Encrypt etcd and control plane boot disks

Autopilot Standard

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Note: This document uses a general availability feature named GKE control plane authority that's only available for eligible Google Cloud customers. To request access to this feature, contact your Google Cloud account team.

This page shows you how to encrypt data that's stored in your Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) control plane using keys that you manage in Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS). You should already be familiar with concepts like etcd, the GKE cluster architecture, and Cloud KMS.

This page describes one part of a set of optional control plane features in GKE that lets you perform tasks like verifying your control plane security posture or configuring encryption and credential signing in the control plane using keys that you manage. For details, see About GKE control plane authority.

By default, Google Cloud applies various security measures to the managed control plane. This page describes optional capabilities that give you more visibility or control over the control plane.

About control plane boot disk and etcd encryption

By default, GKE encrypts the boot disk of a control plane node, the disk that stores data in etcd, and the Google Cloud internal operational backup of etcd by using encryption keys that Google Cloud manages. For details about this default encryption, see Default encryption at rest. You can optionally use your own encryption keys that you manage using Cloud KMS to encrypt these resources. To learn more, see Control plane boot disk and etcd encryption.

You create keys in Cloud KMS that GKE uses to encrypt your control plane resources. Consider the following when you create these resources:

• You can use one key ring for all of the keys in a cluster, regardless of the purpose of each key. If you have an existing key ring that you used for a different purpose, like setting up your own certificate authorities, you can use that key ring for this guide.
• You should create the keys in the same Google Cloud location as your cluster for better latency.
• For most use cases, you can use the software Cloud KMS key protection level. You can also use hardware keys with Cloud HSM.
• You must specify the --purpose flag with the encryption value because these keys are used for symmetric encryption.
• You shouldn't modify the default duration for key destruction.

Usage with other GKE control plane authority features

GKE control plane authority provides the following features related to self-managed keys that you must enable at the same time when you create a cluster:

• Encrypt control plane components (this page)
• Run your own certificate authorities (CAs) and keys

You can only enable these features when you create a new GKE cluster. You can't update existing clusters to use these features. To use both of these features in the same cluster, perform all of the key and CA configuration procedures in both guides, and then run the cluster creation command that enables both sets of features as described in the Create a cluster section.

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.
  Note: For existing gcloud CLI installations, make sure to set the compute/region and compute/zone properties. By setting default locations, you can avoid errors in gcloud CLI like the following: One of [--zone, --region] must be supplied: Please specify location.

• Ensure that your key project has a Cloud KMS key ring for your cluster. You can use any existing key ring in your cluster location. To create a new key ring, see Create a key ring.

• Enable the Cloud Key Management Service API.

  Enable the API

Identify projects

We recommend that you use separate Google Cloud projects as follows:

• Key project: contains all keys.
• Cluster project: contains your GKE clusters.

You can optionally use the same project for your keys and GKE clusters, but we recommend that you use separate projects so that the teams that manage your keys and cryptographic operations are separate from the teams that manage your clusters.

Required roles and permissions

To get the permissions that you need to run your own encryption keys, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles:

• Create Cloud KMS keys: Cloud KMS Admin (roles/cloudkms.admin) on your key project
• Create GKE clusters: Kubernetes Engine Cluster Admin (roles/container.clusterAdmin) on your cluster project

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Requirements

Your cluster must run GKE version 1.31.1-gke.1846000 or later.

Limitations

• You can only configure boot disk and etcd encryption keys during cluster creation.

• For regional Standard mode clusters and for Autopilot clusters, the region in which you create a cluster must have capacity for Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced in at least three zones in that region.

  For zonal Standard mode clusters, the cluster zone must have Hyperdisk Balanced capacity. For help with capacity, contact Cloud Customer Care.

  Confidential mode for Hyperdisk Balanced is only available in specific regions. For details, see Supported regions for Hyperdisk Balanced volumes in Confidential mode.

• GKE only supports keys from Cloud KMS. You can't use another Kubernetes KMS provider or another encryption provider.

• Cloud External Key Manager (Cloud EKM) keys aren't supported.

• You can't access or interact with the Google Cloud internal operational backups of etcd, which are only for disaster recovery.

• Multi-regional keyrings aren't supported. You must use a regional key ring.

Create keys

In this section, you create an encryption key for the boot disks and etcd disks in your control plane and a separate encryption key for the Google Cloud internal operational backup of etcd. You can use one key ring to hold all of these keys and any other keys for the cluster.

Warning: Don't enable automatic key rotation with Cloud KMS. Rotating your encryption keys requires additional steps to ensure that your control plane resources are re-encrypted with new key versions before the original key versions are destroyed.

1. Create the encryption key for your control plane boot disks and etcd disks:

   gcloud kms keys create KCP_DISK_KEY_NAME \
       --keyring=KEYRING_NAME \
       --location=LOCATION \
       --purpose="encryption" \
       --protection-level=PROTECTION_LEVEL \
       --project=KEY_PROJECT_ID
   

   Replace the following:

   • KCP_DISK_KEY_NAME: the name for the encryption key for your control plane boot disks and etcd disks.
   • KEYRING_NAME: the name of the key ring to hold your encryption keys for the cluster.
   • LOCATION: the Google Cloud location for the key ring. This must be the same as your cluster location. For a list of regions, filter for "Region" in the Cloud KMS locations table.
   • PROTECTION_LEVEL: the protection level for the key, like software or hsm.
   • KEY_PROJECT_ID: the project ID of your key project.

2. Create the etcd internal backup encryption key:

   gcloud kms keys create ETCD_BACKUP_KEY_NAME \
       --keyring=KEYRING_NAME \
       --location=LOCATION \
       --purpose="encryption" \
       --protection-level=PROTECTION_LEVEL \
       --project=KEY_PROJECT_ID
   

   Replace ETCD_BACKUP_KEY_NAME with a name for the etcd internal backup encryption key.

Grant IAM roles to the GKE service agent

In this section, you grant IAM roles on the keys that you created to the GKE service agent in the cluster project. The GKE service agent requires these roles to use these keys to encrypt the corresponding control plane resources.

1. Find your cluster project number:

   gcloud projects describe CLUSTER_PROJECT_ID \
       --format='value(projectNumber)'
   

   Replace CLUSTER_PROJECT_ID with the project ID of your GKE cluster project.

   The output is similar to the following:

   1234567890
   

2. Grant the Cloud KMS CryptoKey Encrypter/Decrypter (roles/cloudkms.cryptoKeyEncrypterDecrypter) role on the encryption key for boot disks and etcd disks to the GKE service agent in the cluster project:

   gcloud kms keys add-iam-policy-binding KCP_DISK_KEY_NAME \
       --location=LOCATION \
       --keyring=KEYRING_NAME \
       --member="serviceAccount:[e-mail]" \
       --role=roles/cloudkms.cryptoKeyEncrypterDecrypter \
       --project=KEY_PROJECT_ID
   

   Replace the following:

   • KCP_DISK_KEY_NAME: the name of the disk encryption key.
   • LOCATION: the Google Cloud location for the key.
   • KEYRING_NAME: the name of the key ring that contains the encryption key.
   • CLUSTER_PROJECT_NUMBER: the numerical project number of the cluster project, which you found in the previous step.
   • KEY_PROJECT_ID: the project ID of your key project.

3. Grant the Cloud KMS CryptoKey Encrypter/Decrypter Via Delegation (roles/cloudkms.cryptoKeyEncrypterDecrypterViaDelegation) role on the encryption key for boot disks and etcd disks to the GKE service agent in the cluster project:

   gcloud kms keys add-iam-policy-binding KCP_DISK_KEY_NAME \
       --location=LOCATION \
       --keyring=KEYRING_NAME \
       --member="serviceAccount:[e-mail]" \
       --role=roles/cloudkms.cryptoKeyEncrypterDecrypterViaDelegation \
       --project=KEY_PROJECT_ID
   

4. Grant the Cloud KMS CryptoKey Encrypter (roles/cloudkms.cryptoKeyEncrypter) role on the etcd internal backup encryption key to the GKE service agent in the cluster project:

   gcloud kms keys add-iam-policy-binding ETCD_BACKUP_KEY_NAME \
       --location=LOCATION \
       --keyring=KEYRING_NAME \
       --member="serviceAccount:[e-mail]" \
       --role=roles/cloudkms.cryptoKeyEncrypter \
       --project=KEY_PROJECT_ID
   

   Replace ETCD_BACKUP_KEY_NAME with the name of the etcd operational backup encryption key.

   Granting the roles/cloudkms.cryptoKeyEncrypter role prevents GKE from performing database restorations on your behalf and significantly increases the amount of time to restore functionality when a database problem occurs. To allow GKE to perform restorations for you, grant the roles/cloudkms.cryptoKeyEncrypterDecrypter role instead.

Use encryption keys in a cluster

This section shows you how to identify the paths to your encryption keys.

1. Identify the path to your disk encryption key:

   gcloud kms keys describe KCP_DISK_KEY_NAME \
       --keyring=KEYRING_NAME \
       --location=LOCATION \
       --project=KEY_PROJECT_ID \
       --format="value(name)"
   

   Replace the following:

   • KCP_DISK_KEY_NAME: the name of the encryption key for control plane boot disks and etcd disks.
   • KEYRING_NAME: the name of the key ring that contains the key.
   • LOCATION: the Google Cloud location of the key.
   • KEY_PROJECT_ID: the project ID of your key project.

   The output is similar to the following:

   projects/KEY_PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION/keyRings/KEYRING_NAME/cryptoKeys/disk-encryption-key
   

2. Identify the path to your etcd internal backup encryption key:

   gcloud kms keys describe ETCD_BACKUP_KEY_NAME \
       --keyring=KEYRING_NAME \
       --location=LOCATION \
       --project=KEY_PROJECT_ID \
       --format="value(name)"
   

   Replace ETCD_BACKUP_KEY_NAME with the name of the etcd operational backup encryption key.

   The output is similar to the following:

   projects/KEY_PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION/keyRings/KEYRING_NAME/cryptoKeys/etcd-backup-encryption-key
   

Create a cluster

Warning: Revoking or deleting the Cloud KMS keys that you used for the encryption puts your cluster at risk of irrecoverable data loss.

In this section, you create a cluster with different options specified depending on which GKE control plane authority features you want to configure. You can only configure these features on a cluster during cluster creation. The following commands create Autopilot mode clusters. To create Standard mode clusters instead, use the same flags with the gcloud container clusters create command.

• To create a cluster that configures disk encryption and runs your own CAs and service account signing keys, do the following:

  1. Perform all of the key and CA configuration steps in Run your own certificate authorities and keys.
  2. Find the paths to each of the service account keys and CAs by using the instructions in Set up CAs and keys on a new cluster.

  3. Create a cluster:

     gcloud container clusters create-auto CLUSTER_NAME \
         --location=LOCATION \
         --project=CLUSTER_PROJECT_ID \
         --control-plane-disk-encryption-key=PATH_TO_DISK_KEY \
         --gkeops-etcd-backup-encryption-key=PATH_TO_ETCD_BACKUP_KEY \
         --service-account-signing-keys=PATH_TO_SIGNING_KEY_VERSION \
         --service-account-verification-keys=PATH_TO_VERIFICATION_KEY_VERSION \
         --cluster-ca=PATH_TO_CLUSTER_CA \
         --etcd-peer-ca=PATH_TO_ETCD_PEER_CA \
         --etcd-api-ca=PATH_TO_ETCD_API_CA \
         --aggregation-ca=PATH_TO_AGGREGATION_CA
     

     Replace the following:

     • CLUSTER_NAME: the name of your new cluster.
     • LOCATION: the location of your new cluster.
     • CLUSTER_PROJECT_ID: the project ID of your cluster project.
     • PATH_TO_DISK_KEY: the path to your disk encryption key from the previous steps on this page.
     • PATH_TO_ETCD_BACKUP_KEY: the path to your etcd internal backup encryption key from the previous steps on this page.
     • PATH_TO_SIGNING_KEY_VERSION: the path to the Kubernetes ServiceAccount signing key version in Cloud KMS.
     • PATH_TO_VERIFICATION_KEY_VERSION: the path to the Kubernetes ServiceAccount verification key version in Cloud KMS.
     • PATH_TO_CLUSTER_CA: the path to the cluster CA pool.
     • PATH_TO_ETCD_PEER_CA: the path to the etcd peer CA pool.
     • PATH_TO_ETCD_API_CA: the path to the etcd API CA pool.
     • PATH_TO_AGGREGATION_CA: the path to the aggregation CA pool.

• To create a cluster that only configures disk encryption using the keys that you created in this guide, run the following command:

  gcloud container clusters create-auto CLUSTER_NAME \
      --location=LOCATION \
      --project=CLUSTER_PROJECT_ID \
      --control-plane-disk-encryption-key=PATH_TO_DISK_KEY \
      --gkeops-etcd-backup-encryption-key=PATH_TO_ETCD_BACKUP_KEY
  

  Replace the following:

  • CLUSTER_NAME: the name of your new cluster.
  • LOCATION: the location of your new cluster.
  • CLUSTER_PROJECT_ID: the project ID of your cluster project.
  • PATH_TO_DISK_KEY: the path to your disk encryption key from the previous steps.
  • PATH_TO_ETCD_BACKUP_KEY: the path to your etcd internal backup encryption key from the previous steps.

You can also specify all of these flags when you create a new Standard mode cluster.

Verify the encryption key status

This section shows you how to verify the encryption key that was used during cluster creation. You can perform this verification using Cloud Logging or by using the Google Cloud CLI.

Use Logging to verify keys

To verify the keys using Logging, do the following:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Logs Explorer page:

   Go to Logs Explorer

2. Get the cluster creation log by specifying the following query:

   resource.type="gke_cluster" 
   resource.labels.cluster_name="CLUSTER_NAME"
   resource.labels.location="CLUSTER_LOCATION"
   protoPayload.serviceName="container.googleapis.com"
   protoPayload.methodName="google.container.v1.ClusterManager.CreateCluster"
   protoPayload.request.cluster.userManagedKeysConfig:*
   

3. Click Run query.

In the output, check that the cluster creation parameters included a key path that corresponds to the key that you set up in Cloud KMS.

Use the gcloud CLI to verify keys

To use the gcloud CLI to verify the encryption key, do the following:

1. For the disk encryption key, run the following command:

   gcloud container clusters describe CLUSTER_NAME \
       --location=LOCATION \
       --format="value(userManagedKeysConfig.controlPlaneDiskEncryptionKey)"
   

2. For the etcd internal backup encryption key, run the following command:

   gcloud container clusters describe CLUSTER_NAME \
       --location=LOCATION \
       --format="value(userManagedKeysConfig.gkeopsEtcdBackupEncryptionKey)"
   

What's next

• Learn about what else you can view in the control plane
• Run your own certificate authorities and keys in GKE
• Verify control plane VM integrity