Anchore Enterprise is a distributed application that runs on supported container runtime platforms. The product is deployed as a series of containers that provide services whose functions are made available through APIs. These APIs can be consumed directly via included clients such as the AnchoreCTL and GUI or via out-of-the-box integrations for use with container registries, Kubernetes, and CI/CD tooling. Alternatively, users can interact directly with the APIs for custom integrations.
Services
The following sections describe the services within Anchore Enterprise.
APIs
Enterprise Public API
The Enterprise API is the primary RESTful API for Anchore Enterprise and is the one used by AnchoreCTL, the GUI and integrations. This API is used to upload data such as a software bill of materials (SBOM) and container images, execute functions and retrieve information (SBOM data, vulnerabilities and the results of policy evaluations). The API also exposes the user and account management functions. See Using the Anchore API for more information.
Stateful Services
Data Syncer
The Anchore Enterprise Data Syncer downloads and normalizes data from external sources and makes it available to the Anchore Enterprise. It communicates with the hosted Anchore Data Service to fetch the following datasets:
- vulnerability_db: Contains vulnerability data from the NVD, Red Hat, and other sources.
- vulnerability_annotations: Contains vulnerability annotations from CISA KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities) that are used to provide additional context to vulnerabilities.
- malware_signatures: Contains malware signatures from ClamAV that are used to detect malware in images.
Policy Engine
The policy engine is responsible for loading an SBOM and associated content and then evaluating it against a set of policy rules. This resulting policy evaluation is then passed to the Catalog service. The policies are stored as a series of JSON documents that can be uploaded and downloaded via the Enterprise API or edited via the GUI.
Catalog
The catalog is the primary state manager of the system and provides data access to system services from the backend database service (PostgreSQL).
SimpleQueue
The SimpleQueue is another PostgreSQL-backed queue service that the other components use for task execution, notifications, and other asynchronous operations.
Workers
Analyzers
An Analyzer is the component that generates an SBOM from an artifact or source repo (which may be passed through the API or pulled from a registry), performs the vulnerability and policy analysis, and stores the SBOM and the results of the analysis in the organization’s Anchore Enterprise repository. Alternatively the AnchoreCTL client can be used to locally scan and generate the SBOM and then pass the SBOM to the analyzers via the API. Each Analyzer can process one container image or source repo at a time. You can increase the number of Analyzers (within the limits of your contract) to increase the throughput for the system in order to process multiple artifacts concurrently.
Clients
AnchoreCTL
AnchoreCTL is a Go-based command line client for Anchore Enterprise. It can be used to send commands to the backend API as part of manual or automated operations. It can also be used to generate SBOM content that is local to the machine it is run on.
AnchoreCTL is the recommended client for developing custom integrations with CI/CD systems or other situations where local processing of content needs to be performed before being passed to the Enterprise API.
Anchore Enterprise GUI
The Anchore Enterprise GUI is a front end to the API services and simplifies many of the processes associated with creating policies, viewing SBOMs, creating and running reports, and configuring the overall system (notifications, users, registry credentials, and more).
Integrations
External systems can integrate with Anchore Enterprise using software entities that exercise select parts of the Anchore Enterprise API. Such software entities can be executable agents or plugins. We use the generic term integration instance to refer to such a deployed software entity. Enterprise can receive health reports from integration instances to track and monitor their status (assuming the integration instance implements that).
Kubernetes Admission Controller
The Kubernetes Admission Controller is a plugin that can be used to intercept a container image as it is about to be deployed to Kubernetes. The image is passed to Anchore Enterprise which analyzes it to determine if it meets the organization’s policy rules. The policy evaluation result can then allow, warn, or block the deployment.
Kubernetes and ECS Runtime Inventory
anchore-k8s-invetory and anchore-ecs-inventory are agents that creates an ongoing inventory of the images that are running in a Kubernetes or ECS cluster. The agentes run inside the runtime environment (under a service account) and connects to the local runtime API. The agents poll the API on an interval to retrieve a list of container images that are currently in use.
Multi-Tenancy
Accounts
Accounts in Anchore Enterprise are a boundary that separates data, policies, notifications, and users into a distinct domain. An account can be mapped to a team, project, or application that needs its own set of policies applied to a specific set of content. Users may be granted access to multiple accounts.
Users
Users are local to an account and can have roles as defined by RBAC. Usernames must be unique across the entire deployment to enable API-based authentication requests. Certain users can be configured such that they have the ability to switch context between accounts, akin to a super user account.