I am looking for some recommendations on how to secure the data of my physical servers (against physical theft), that I am about to set up. I am new to selfhosting but have a few years of experience running Linux on a desktop.
My usecase is a simple debian(?) server at home with Paperless ngx and Tailscale for when I am away from home.
The question is how to encrypt the data while still being able to keep the server updated.
Coming from Desktop my first thought was to simply enable FDE on install. But that would mean supplying the password everytime the server needs to reboot for an update. Could someone provide some insights on how often updates to debian require a reboot?
My second thought was to use an encrypted data partition. That way the server could reboot and I could use wireguard to ssh in and open the partition even when I am away from home for a longer time.
I am open to other ideas!
I wanted to encrypt against physical theft but then I realized that the server weighs 20kg and there’s more valuable and lighter stuff to steal. And a thief would never be able to mount the zfs array, they’ll just fence my $2000 server for $50 and someone else will sell it piece by piece on ebay. And between people who buys used drives online on ebay almost nobody is going to do a full surface scan of a 12tb drive in the hopes of finding valuable data.