FDE on Mac OS X Server

I’ve rolled a few Mac OS X Servers into production either sitting on top of PGP or Checkpoint.  Other than the obvious issues of killing the ability to remotely reboot the thing it’s actually going really well so far.  If anyone else has any observations or has been doing this as well let me know as I’d be interested in comparing performance benchmarks and notes about other potential technical ramifications.  So far I’m seeing almost the same performance (about 5% degradation, which is easily made up by running faster drives), there are limited troubleshooting options and the issue with it booting to a password request rather than to the OS if you’re remotely rebooting – but nothing that (for most) is a show stopper…

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Posted on June 23, 2009 at 10:13 pm by admin · Permalink
In: Mac OS X Server · Tagged with: , , ,

4 Responses

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  1. Written by ahancock
    on June 24, 2009 at 12:24 am
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    We’ve got an iMac running 10.5 server. It’s big job in life is lightspeed & daylite … Checkpoint has given no issues , even with both database systems being hit.

    and if anyone snatches/grabs the computer.. we can still sleep at night.

  2. Written by admin
    on June 24, 2009 at 12:59 am
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    Great to hear, we’re seeing the same type of performance, even on Daylite with a lot of users and running as an OD Master… Haven’t put it on a host running Lightspeed, but can easily see doing so… Sleeping at night is highly overrated…

  3. Written by sebbo.myopenid.com/
    on June 24, 2009 at 5:39 am
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    I’m starting a Server Whole Disk Encryption project right now. I’ve looked into PGP but their FAQ page says explicitly Mac OS X Server is not supported:

    http://www.pgp.com/products/wholediskencryption/#faq25

    Am I looking at the wrong product? Or I guess you’ve proved that it can work in production…

  4. Written by admin
    on June 24, 2009 at 10:49 am
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    Nope, you’re looking at the correct thing. Just because you can install it programatically doesn’t mean the vendors support it in a production environment. PGP Whole Disk will run on Mac OS X Server. As will CheckPoint. I guess that would be another drawback I didn’t mention yet…

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