ZDLRA and TDE wallet location

TDE and SEPS security

I am seeing TDE used more and more at customers as security concerns increase.
This blog post will go through configuring TDE and SEPS security (which ZDLRA uses) together.
If OID is used also, this post talks about how to combine OID and SEPS.

First off, the solution depends on the version of oracle you are using.  Depending on your configuration SEPS security and TDE may use the same wallet location. This is NOT recommended.
Below is the hierarchy of where Oracle expects the TDE wallet to be. As soon as it finds the setting it stops

TDE_WALLET_LOCATION
         WALLET_LOCATION
                    $ORACLE_HOME/admin/$DB_UNIQUE_NAME/wallet
                              $ORACLE_BASE/admin/$DB_UNIQUE_NAME/wallet

**NOTE: unless the TDE_WALLET_LOCATION is already set,
                 setting the WALLET_LOCATION will break TDE

When using SEPS security it is critical that you properly set the TDE wallet location first.

11.2

First let's talk through 11.2 and the recommendation for TDE encryption wallet. This is the most basic configuration setting.

Best practice is the set the ENCRYPTION_WALLET_LOCATION in the sqlnet.ora.
If there are multiple databases sharing the same $ORACLE_HOME (multi-homing), then the location needs to use a variable.

Single home example.

ENCRYPTION_WALLET_LOCATION=
 (SOURCE=
  (METHOD=FILE)
   (METHOD_DATA=
    (DIRECTORY=/u01/app/oracle/tde_wallet)))

Multi-Home examples

Example 1 - using the $ORACLE_SID variable for the location

ENCRYPTION_WALLET_LOCATION=
 (SOURCE=
  (METHOD=FILE)
   (METHOD_DATA=
    (DIRECTORY=/u01/app/oracle/admin/$ORACLE_SID/tde_wallet)))

Example 2 - using a new variable

First ensure that the variable set is set when servctl is used to restart the databases.

srvctl setenv database -db database_name -env "DB_UNIQUE_NAME=database_name"

Second ensure the variable is set during any scripts and when logging into the host

export $DB_UNIQUE_NAME=database_name

Then use this variable within the sqlnet.ora

ENCRYPTION_WALLET_LOCATION=
 (SOURCE=
  (METHOD=FILE)
   (METHOD_DATA=
    (DIRECTORY=/u01/app/oracle/admin/$DB_UNIQUE_NAME/tde_wallet)))

** NOTE: you need to create the directories for all databases sharing that same $ORACLE_HOME even if they don't use TDE or SEPS.

12.1/12.2

The configuration for 12.1 is similar to 11.2 with one exception, 12.1 allows you to use ASM for the location of the wallet in a RAC environment.

Here are the examples of ASM based on the 11.2 information.

Single home example.

ENCRYPTION_WALLET_LOCATION=
 (SOURCE=
  (METHOD=FILE)
   (METHOD_DATA=
    (DIRECTORY=+DATA/tde_wallet)))

Multi-Home example

ENCRYPTION_WALLET_LOCATION=
 (SOURCE=
  (METHOD=FILE)
   (METHOD_DATA=
    (DIRECTORY=+DATA/$DB_UNIQUE_NAME/tde_wallet)))

18c+

Oracle version 18c adds more functionality for the TDE wallet.

18C introduces a new init parameter for TDE called "WALLET_ROOT". in fact, TDE_ENCRYPTION_LOCATION will be depreciated (see below from 18c docs).

WALLET_ROOT is set to the starting location of the TDE wallet, and uses the location as the starting location for wallets for both the CDB, and subdirectories for PDB wallets.

WALLET_ROOT can either be a local file system (or NAS).

          Example

                           WALLET_ROOT=wallet-root-directory-path

It can also be set to an ASM location

         Example

                           WALLET_ROOT=+disk-group-name/db-unique-name

SUMMARY : When implementing the ZDLRA (which uses SEPS security) with an existing TDE implementation, it is critical to ensure that TDE was configured using best practices.  If best practices were not followed, configuring the WALLET_LOCATION may cause wallet issues with databases.