THE PERFORMANCE COST OF TRANSPARENT DATA ENCRYPTION IN POSTGRESQL
THE PERFORMANCE COST OF TRANSPARENT DATA ENCRYPTION IN POSTGRESQL
10 PagesThis whitepaper evaluates the real performance impact of pg_tde 2.2.2 using reproducible PostgreSQL benchmarks designed to expose encryption overhead rather than hide it. Percona reports that relation-file encryption generally adds 2% or less overhead, while realistic OLTP read-write workloads including WAL encryption stayed below 10% in every tested configuration. Higher costs appear in specific edge cases: bulk table rewrites can add roughly 10–30%, while extreme high-concurrency WAL workloads reached about 20% overhead in pg_tde 2.2.2, down from more than 40% previously. The paper explains how modern AES acceleration minimizes typical costs and argues that organizations should evaluate TDE using realistic workload patterns rather than relying on a single favorable benchmark.
