Analysis about the performance impact of using data encryption or not

Question

Hello,

I was trying to find any analysis regarding the performance impact of using data encryption or not in the Azure services.

Beyond security reasons, performance is an important KPI and there is no reference in the Azure documentation.

Anyone has a clue where an analysis can be found?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

On this article you will find the performance impact of Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) on SQL Server queries and that experiment can be used to determine the impact on Azure SQL database. However, I would say you won’t notice performance impact for the typical query.

In addition to the impact of TDE on queries during the initial encryption o the database some DTUs are needed to encrypt and decrypt data, but you may consider scale up the database tier to neutralize the impact and speed up the process. For example, encryption of a 500 GB on a serverless tier, Gen5 2 vcores only advances 5% on a 1 hour time interval with no user activity on the database. Maybe the maintenance window (off hours) is not enough time depending of the service level/tier and size of the database. An this impact existdespite TDE supportst Intel AES-NI hardware acceleration of encryption.

Hope this helps.