Running An Encrypted LVM In Ubuntu 10.10

While running the Apache web server did not cause a large performance hit when on an encrypted LVM, when running our PostgreSQL test profile there was a very dramatic hit even for this powerful laptop with an Intel Core i7 CPU and an Intel SSD. When an encrypted LVM was not used, the number of transactions per second was over nine times faster.

However, in a more basic disk serving benchmark like PostMark, there was not any measurable change in performance.

In the simplest test of measuring the time to extract the Linux kernel source package, there was no measurable change in performance when using an encrypted LVM.

These Linux encrypted LVM benchmarks are similar to that of some of our earlier runs where when running any demanding applications/processes that stress the disk heavily (such as PostgreSQL) there is a huge performance hit due to the encryption overhead even with a very fast notebook. However, in more light applications there is not a measurable hit. Personally I continue to use an encrypted LVM on my mobile production systems for securing data and a more complete solution than just encrypting the home data and SWAP with Ubuntu's more popular encryption option.

Discuss this article in our forums, IRC channel, or email the author. You can also follow our content via RSS and on social networks like Facebook, Identi.ca, and Twitter (@Phoronix and @MichaelLarabel). Subscribe to Phoronix Premium to view our content without advertisements, view entire articles on a single page, and experience other benefits.