Enarx FAQ
The project aim is this:
- Create a way to create and run "private, fungible, serverless" applications using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). In other words, to provide a platform abstraction for TEEs.
The problem we're trying to address is that there are many sensitive workloads that you shouldn't entrust to a public cloud to run, or may even have concerns about running on on-premises systems. TEEs (see below) provide a great opportunity to help secure these workloads, but they're not easy to use. Enarx aims to make it simple to deploy workloads to a variety of different TEE technologies in the cloud, on your premises or elsewhere, whilst ensuring that your application workload is as secure as possible.
You can find a basic introduction here: Introducing Enarx.
The letter "n", then "arks". En-arks. Enarx. Simple.
It's almost Latin for "in the citadel" or "within the stronghold". Nathaniel McCallum and Mike Bursell, who are ultimately to blame for the project, are both old/ancient language geeks, and wanted a cool name. We tried lots: some were rubbish, some were taken. We chose Enarx, which also (luckily) turned out not to be trademark-encumbered.
Absolutely. All of Enarx is, and always will be, open source. We use the Apache 2.0 license.
Everybody. No: really. Do you have some sensitive data or processes? Yes, you do. So you're a potential Enarx user.
(2019-06-27) Sadly not. We're working hard, and we'd love people to work with us. We hope to be adding more information very soon, to allow you to get started. If you want more, or something sooner, please feel free to add an Issue, and we'll see what we can do.
A TEE is Trusted Execution Environment. TEE technology is such a key part of the architecture of Enarx that is has its own page: TEEs (Trusted Execution Environments).
A Keep is the Enarx project's word for a TEE instance with all of the Enarx runtime and associated pieces inside it.
No single company or organisation "owns" Enarx. It's open source software. Copyright on code is owned by whoever contributes it to the project. For more information, try this definition from Opensource.com or our license page (spoiler: it's Apache 2.0).
Well, Mike Bursell wrote quite a lot of this, which is why it's in pristine British English, with the exception of:
- any typos
- the few times that Nathaniel McCallum pressured him into writing something understandable by broader audiences
- (why can't we have Enarx' as the possessive for "Enarx"?)
- the word "LICENSE", which is an important part of the project, and has established meaning within the project hierarchy.