PVE limitations with encrypted ZFS datasets

phip

New Member
Aug 13, 2024
7
0
1
Hi all,

I recently stumbled when trying to migrate a VM from a node with an encrypted ZFS dataset to a node without encryption:

```
cannot send nvmepool/vm-310-disk-0@__migration__: encrypted dataset nvmepool/vm-310-disk-0 may not be sent with properties without the raw flag
```

It's not a big deal in this case, but it led searching me for known limitations of PVE in regards to ZFS encryption. All I found so far is this:
Admittedly, this migration failure got me by surprise, especially since migration in the other direction (unencrypted node to encrypted node) worked flawlessly. And at least according to the ZFS properties, the migrated datasets on the target are now encrypted, so it doesn't look like it just stored them as unencrypted datasets/zvols.

Is there a list somewhere documenting what features are unavailable with encryption in more detail?

As a plus, I'd also be happy to know why these limitations are there. As long as a dataset/zvol is unlocked, the encryption is supposed to be completely transparent to any application accessing the data in it, but apparently migration uses something that happens on a level where encryption makes a difference.

Thanks and best regards,
Philipp

EDIT: I've searched around some more and found that this is not directly a limitation of PVE, but rather one of ZFS encryption. This also brought me to some reports about ZFS encryption causing headaches unrelated to PVE, so people should generally think well whether they really want ZFS encryption (be it with PVE or not):

 
Last edited:

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