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Keys and Certificates with TDE

Matthew McGiffen has a big keychain to store all of those keys:

When you first look at the encryption hierarchy for TDE in SQL Server it can be a bit daunting. There seem to be a lot of objects involved and it might not be clear why each is required. It can be tempting to skip a full understanding of all the objects and just get on with setting things up – which is relatively straightforward.

I’d encourage you not to do that and I’ll explain why. There are a lot of scenarios that might crop up in the lifecycle of a TDE protected database instance. Recovering a protected database from backup. Migrating database from one server to another. Managing high availability. The list goes on.

Remember: the bigger the keychain, the more powerful the man.