ZFS VM data encryption

fabienfs

Member
Jun 6, 2021
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Hello,

I have a ZFS data raid that I use as a data disk for my VMs.

My question is: does ZFS encrypt data by default?

Do I have to enable Bitlocker style encryption on my Windows VMs or does ZFS natively encrypt the data?

thanks
 
Google for ZFS native encryption. You can create a dataset, encrypt it und use this dataset as a storage for your VMs. All new virtual disks created (or moved) there will be encrypted by ZFS. But you will need to manually unlock the dataset after each reboot and because of that autostart of VMs won't work.

Its possible to type in a passphrase or to use keyfiles.