This can be a noticeable challenge for ZFS systems with many disks-in some cases, many tens of disks. Another problem with encryption-beneath-ZFS is that the extra layer is an extra thing to go wrong-and it's in a position to undo all of ZFS' normal integrity guarantees. One of the gnarliest is that each individual disk that will be part of the pool must be encrypted, with each volume loaded and decrypted prior to the ZFS pool import stage. In fact, the attacker can't necessarily see that ZFS is in use at all!īut there are significant disadvantages to putting LUKS (or similar) beneath OpenZFS.

Putting something like Linux's LUKS underneath OpenZFS has an advantage-with the entire disk encrypted, an enterprising attacker can no longer see the names, sizes, or properties of ZFS datasets and zvols without access to the key. As mentioned in the introduction, LUKS, VeraCrypt, and many other schemes are available and can be layered either beneath or atop OpenZFS itself.

There's more to OpenZFS native encryption than the algorithms used, though-so we'll try to give you a brief but solid grounding in the sysadmin's-eye perspective on the 'why' and 'what' as well as the simple 'how.' Why (or why not) OpenZFS native encryption?Ī clever sysadmin who wants to provide at-rest encryption doesn't actually need OpenZFS native encryption, obviously. OpenZFS' encryption algorithm defaults to either aes-256-ccm (prior to 0.8.4) or aes-256-gcm (>= 0.8.4) when encryption=on is set. This obviates the need for separate tools like LUKS, VeraCrypt, or BitLocker.

First introduced in OpenZFS 0.8, native encryption allows a system administrator to transparently encrypt data at rest within ZFS itself. One of the many features OpenZFS brings to the table is ZFS native encryption.

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