How-to encrypt your virtual machine

Introduction

Virtual Machine Encryption (VME) is a security feature that protects your VM files and disks by encrypting them. This ensures that even if storage or backup files are accessed without authorization, the data remains unreadable.

Benefits of encryption

• Enhanced Security: Protects sensitive data at rest and in transit.

• Regulatory Compliance: Helps meet security standards and compliance requirements.

Trade-offs of encryption

While encryption significantly improves security, there are some considerations:

• Performance Impact: Encryption may introduce slight CPU overhead, depending on workloads.

• Backup & Restore Considerations: Not all backup solutions support encrypted VMs natively; ensure compatibility with your backup tools.

ITS Private cloud Portal

1. Login to the Portal https://cloud-portal.eis.utoronto.ca

2. Power Off the Virtual Machine.

   Open

   

3. Click on the toggle “Encryption” and Confirm the Message.

   Open

   

4. Once the encryption process completes, turn the virtual machine on.

Command-Line Interface (vss-cli)

The following steps should guide you through the process of requesting a virtual machine snapshot using either via https://vss-cli.eis.utoronto.ca or a local ITS Private Cloud Command Line Interface vss-cli.

1. (Optional) Run vss-cli configure to configure your VSS credentials. If you have already done this, please go to next step.

2. Use the vss-cli compute vm set <name-or-vm-id> encryption on command to submit a virtual machine change request to encrypt your virtual machine.

   vss-cli --wait compute vm set <name-or-vm_id> encryption on

3. Once the request is submitted, you can follow up the request status with the vss-cli request change command:

   vss-cli request change ls --sort created_on,desc

4. You will get a confirmation email for the request submission and when the task has completed