Encryption of Granular Backup Sets on Disk

[JarrodC]

I was updating a job I created some time back and to my surprise, I received this notification when I went to save it:

I backup to disk and take that disk offsite for safe storage.  The fact that GRT essentially disables encryption is news to me and to be honest is rather disturbing that I'm only being made aware of it now.

For our environment, GRT is required and so is encryption.  If Backup Exec is not capable of doing both, then my immediate next best preference is BitLocker.  My question is this - if I encrypt my offsite disks with BitLocker, will this break GRT. 

Thank you.

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

GRT cannot be encrypted as the VFF driver that accesses the content of the IMG to get at the individual data (files/e-mails etc) cannot handle encryption access as it has to be able to mount the EDB\VMDK\VHD etc directly

If you are removing disks for offsite storage then you should be able to enable encryption technology outside of Backup Exec on the disk itself (as long as the encryption is transparent or at least unlocked) for the Backup Exec process to access the IMG content

[JarrodC]

Thanks Colin, this answers my question!

[Colin_Weaver]

Bit more info

The best practices document indicates if you encrypt the B2D volumes you may have performance issues

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000083157

Also (not in teh document) as the SDR environment won't contain the software to decrypt such storage you will not be abl to make use of this type of DR process (at least against the Backup Exec server itself. ) in the same way that SDR can't be used with a Deduplication Storage Folder.