have done a bit of testing with bonnie++ on encrypted svnd devices
Very interesting devices, I made first tests with them, too.
if anyone else has gotten similar performance results i'd like to see them.
Yes, I had similar results. I had a MySQL database running on an encrypted SVND, and though I didn't measured it precisely, I had roughly 15 seconds for a query with the database files on the encrypted device and roughly 5 seconds for the same query with the files directly on the harddisk. But it all depends on what you want to do with it. If you have static files, e.g. for a download page on a webserver, you can copy them to a RAM disk (mfs) before starting the webserver (add a GB RAM if necessary), and you won't care about the svnd speed anymore as it's get read only once at startup. In my case, which will most probably be a MySQL database, I'll experiment also with a RAM disk soon: I'll create the RAM disk with the database files from the encrypted disk and start MySQL with the files in RAM (which should be quite fast as long as there's enough RAM) and copy them back with a script after shutting down MySQL. Additionally I'll run a second MySQL server as a slave, probably as a first test even on the same machine, for database replication directly to the encrypted disk. Performance is quite unimportant for the replication server in my case and it doesn't affect the master at all, it just reads the master's log files (from the RAM disk) and keeps a database copy for the case of power failure. I'm quite sure there are more workarounds depending of what you want to do with your encrypted data, but if you want want to use encryption, it will always be slower on the same hardware. That's the price for encryption, at least that's how I see it. Tas.
