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Linux Disk Encryption Performance

1 post · Mar 2020

What this trail covers

This post introduces the investigation into Linux disk encryption performance, highlighting the trade-offs between block-level and file-level encryption, and hardware vs. software implementations. It details a benchmarking setup using RAM disks to measure the performance penalty of dm-crypt and sets the stage for exploring optimizations.

All Cloudflare trails
  1. Speeding up Linux disk encryptionThis post details the initial investigation into Linux disk encryption performance, establishing a benchmarking methodology using RAM disks and LUKS detached headers to compare encrypted vs. unencrypted device throughput. It explains the storage stack and different encryption approaches, concluding that software-based full disk encryption is preferred for server systems. The initial benchmark results show a significant performance drop with dm-crypt.