® ®A Performance Comparison of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Transparent Data Encryption and NetLib® Encryptionizer®

Abstract- Data and information security are critical elements of the modern world. Relational database management systems (RDBMS) such as Microsoft1 SQL Server are the backbone of data storage, retrieval, and manipulation. With SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, Microsoft introduces Transparent Data Encryption (TDE); also known as whole database encryption, TDE secures complete database instances using industry standard Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Triple Data Encryption Standard (TDES) encryption ciphers. Prior to Transparent Data Encryption, whole database encryption has been readily available for Microsoft SQL Server using Encryptionizer from NetLib. This paper details the methodology, results, and conclusions in comparing the performance of 128-bit AES encrypted TDE and Encryptionizer SQL Server 2008 instances against a baseline, unencrypted instance. Benchmark data results were collected from virtual single processor systems using Virtual PC and VMware, and a non-virtual dual processor host system. The evaluation included ten separate benchmarks in five categories: data retrieval, insertion, update, deletion, and backup. All evaluations were conducted using SQL scripts executed using Microsoft Transact-SQL against a sample Northwind database expanded in data size by a factor of 100. Virtual single processor results yielded a slight performance advantage for Encryptionizer over Transparent Data Encryption, and a significant performance advantage for Encryptionizer over Transparent Data Encryption in the non-virtual dual processor configuration. Final benchmark results followed a balanced execution pattern to minimize the impact of indeterminate errors