can a virtual disk be encrypted by the guest os ?

[efranklin28]

I am currently looking to move away from freenas and unraid seems like a logical choice. More on the "why's" in a minute.  My main concern is the lack of encryption for unraid, so my question is....

can i install say Ubuntu,Windows,  FreeBSD, Etc in a VM withing unraid, then have the guest OS encrypt the virtual disk as needed to make it secure ? the bulk of my files are Large Video and audio files streamed via Plex and don't need to be encrypted. But I also run UrBackup server and have several pc's including a few that are offsite backup to it. So encryption is a must since the server is located in my house and theft is always a possibility. Am I on the right track here or will I lose the virtual disk in the event the bare metal disk fails? or can the bare metal disk containing the virtual disk be part of am array?  Am i way off here or is there a better way ?

 

I know some people do crazy and dumb stuff with there NAS units and I am not one of them. so please no attacks, just wanting to know if this will work reliably and securely without jumping through hoops, hacking, rigging, patching or letting the smoke out. thanks

 

Now for the reasons for wanting to switch.

1. freenas zfs is resource hungry.

2. can't grow pools

2. I have had multiple disk start to show bad sectors within a few months of purchase. including a new HGST 6Tb Nas disk. ( lost 3 others in a year. none were more than 18 months old) This creates red flags in the system and disk totally fails soon after. Failures were not motherboard related because i tried a new system with same results.

3. I have s supply of WD enteprise drives that are no more than 2 years old that were removed from an Iscsi tower for a security camera system.  so this will get me a running system then i can replace them with larger when the time comes.

 

current freenas setup.

MSI 970a-g46

4.0 Ghz 8 core amd

16Gb ram.

and a load of disks.

 

Im looking to put unraid on a dell T1700 that i obtained free ( the perks of being a CCTV installer )

CPU. Intel Core i7 (4th Gen) 4770 / 3.4 GHz.

Max Turbo Speed. 3.9 GHz.

Quad-Core.

Intel C226.

4GB non-ecc ( will soon replace with 16Gb Ecc )

 

thinking about 6TB parity disk (just because thats what I have)

2 - 1Tb enteprise drives (more freebies) for cache

various size data disks for now. will replace one by one

[METDeath]

Seeing as the virtual disk is presented as a raw disk to the guest, it should be possible. However... what sort of performance hit you'll take on the encrypted virtual disk... well, one way to find out.

[JonathanM]

Seeing as the virtual disk is presented as a raw disk to the guest, it should be possible. However... what sort of performance hit you'll take on the encrypted virtual disk... well, one way to find out.

The performance hit of an encrypted virtual disk on a parity protected array member is going to be brutal. Also, I've seen some people having issues getting keyboard response during boot time, so there may be some experimentation needed to find the combination of settings necessary to allow password entry on boot.

[efranklin28]

ok. Thanks for reply's. I'm only going to use it as a file backup location so speed is not important. just so long as it will run stable, most likely ubuntu, and be secure against physical theft. I back up my dads and mother in laws pc along with a few laptops to my file server remotely so i want it secure.  I think i will give it a try this week with Ubuntu and see what happens, unless anybody has any better solutions. Thanks

[efranklin28]

as for unresponsive keyboard. I will have 2 virtual disks. one unencrypted for ubuntu and the other will be my backup target and i will encrypt that one. that should take care of keyboard issue.  after os boot up i will login and unlock data disk manually.

[JonathanM]

as for unresponsive keyboard. I will have 2 virtual disks. one unencrypted for ubuntu and the other will be my backup target and i will encrypt that one. that should take care of keyboard issue.  after os boot up i will login and unlock data disk manually.

That will solve the keyboard issue nicely, also, if you put your boot vdisk on your cache drive, your performance will be much more livable, and having the encrypted destination disk on the protected array should be fine. Set up like that, I doubt the speed difference will be noticeable.

 

I assumed you would be booting off an encrypted volume hosted on the parity protected array.