Encryption + Virtualization

[tubedogg]

I’ve been goofing around with virtualization for about a month now and I’m very impressed.
I will be upgrading from XP to Vista 64 soon. One thing that I want to do is “off load” a lot of specialized software that I use to VMs. For example:

• VM for web development server (apache/mysql)
• VM for installing new software, in case there is a virus on it, so as not to screw up my main OS.
• As an added benefit, when/if I will have to reinstall my MAIN OS in the future, I will not have to reinstall this specialized software.

Encryption

I want to protect the contents of my VMs and my host.

Example:

• Hard drive contains main OS + VM files
• If someone steals my hard drive, and connects it to another computer, or tries to log into windows, I do not want them to be able to view the contents of my drive.
• I would prefer if the file names were scrambled as well.

Paranoid? Maybe a bit.. but an extra layer of security can never hurt.

So far I have considered two approaches:

1) Use EFS to encrypt Partition that contains VM files
2) Inside GUEST Vista OS, Use Bitlocker.

So far I’m leaning towards #1 ..

Backup – make sure I don’t “lock myself out”

In the event that my MAIN OS crashes, I want to make sure I’m able to restore the main OS from a recent Acronis backup, and still have access to my VMs

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Has anyone done something like this? Or have any thoughts! Looking forward to your feedback..

 

[sabregen]

Seagate FDE = hardware (disk controller level) full drive encryption.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=1831bb5f5ed93110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

 

[nitrobass24]

TrueCrypt the whole drive

 

[keenan]

TrueCrypt the whole drive

+ 1

 

[Deleted member 16178]

+ 1

+99

No need to encrypt the Guest VM's if the entire host disk is encrypted.

Be sure to encrypt your backups as well tho...