SED drives and how to use them properly

TrueNAS General
1

Hi there,

Long time FreeNAS and CORE fan, dipping my toe with SCALE right now, and also, I just acquired enterprise SED HDD drives.

I read the documentation on how to setup the SED global password for the SED drives, but I still have a problem understanding the Pool creation process in relation to the SED encryption. If I set my global SED password, is it applied, or is it just a key to read the drives?

From that documentation, here is my understanding:

(Drives are all unlocked already)

-Create a password, save it properly

-Set Global SED password in TureNAS GUI (Advanced-SED Password)

-Use sedhelper setup password to apply it on all SED drives seen by TrueNAS

-Check disk encryption status with sedutil-cli (not sure how precisely)

-Create a pool like usual, without ZFS native encryption.

Am I understanding this correctly?

TIA.

2

Yes, you are understanding it correctly.

Creating a pool does not do any SED operation other than making sure all disks are unlocked by using the SED password.

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