Skip to main content
SANtricity 11.8

What is FDE/FIPS security?

Contributors netapp-jolieg
PDFs

FDE/FIPS security refers to secure-capable drives that encrypt data during writes and decrypt data during reads using a unique encryption key. These secure-capable drives prevent unauthorized access to the data on a drive that is physically removed from the storage array.

Secure-capable drives can be either Full Disk Encryption (FDE) drives or Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) drives. FIPS drives have undergone certification testing.

Note

For volumes that require FIPS support, use only FIPS drives. Mixing FIPS and FDE drives in a volume group or pool will result in all drives being treated as FDE drives. Also, an FDE drive cannot be added to or used as a spare in an all-FIPS volume group or pool.