CyberOptic's questions

I wanted to use an older T2 machine as a webserver for SSL heavy websites. With Solaris, there is the crypto acceleration available which would make sense for SSL. Now I am wondering if this crypto acceleration has ever been ported to Linux?

# cat /etc/debian_version
7.7

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
cpu             : UltraSparc T2 (Niagara2)
fpu             : UltraSparc T2 integrated FPU
pmu             : niagara2
prom            : OBP 4.32.2.b 2010/12/21 20:20
type            : sun4v
ncpus probed    : 64
ncpus active    : 64
D$ parity tl1   : 0
I$ parity tl1   : 0
cpucaps         : flush,stbar,swap,muldiv,v9,blkinit,n2,mul32,div32,v8plus,popc,vis,vis2,ASIBlkInit

# openssl engine
(dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support

The Setup is as follows:

• 1x Principal
• 1x Secondary
• 1x Witness

If the Witness and Principal are gone (Hardware- or networkfailure), the secondary DB stays offline. I know this is by design. But if the Witness comes back up and the principal stays down, there is no switchover. Why?

Assuming I've got four C3750X, each side stacked with Stackwise Plus and using RSTP:

C1 -----10Gbit----- C2
|                    |
|                    |
SW                  SW
|                    |
|                    |
C3 -----10Gbit----- C4

Would the second 10Gbit-uplink in RSTP alternate or backup state?

Edit: The two 10Gbit lines are provided by two different carriers with two different round-time-trips (due to different fibre lengths)

What are the performance differences between the various lines of Cisco Catalysts? Google found noting useful.

Are there any benchmarks or real-life experiences how the C65xx, C49xx, C37xx and C35xx perform? Is the packet latency in switching mode for all series the same?

Edit: I am thinking mainly about 1GBit switching with <20 servers, although mixed unicast and multicast with different packet sizes.

Does anyone know a (free?) way to have a fully encrypted local-disk (no NFS,iSCSI,FC) VMFS inside the hypervisor itself? I am using ESXi 4.1 U2.

I'm planning a redundant set-up for VMware. Two locations (about 8-12km distance) are to be connected with dark fibre for SAN connectivity. I am looking for a FC-SAN product that allows transparent failover for VMware Fault-Tolerance. This means, that if one SAN is offline the other SAN will promote the LUNs automatically .
Neither NetApp nor EMC does seem to provide this featue...

Any hint?

newer Catalysts do not offer the ISL trunk mode anymore. Now I fear VLAN-hopping/encapsulation attacks when using VLANs for WAN-isolation.

1. What can I do to prevent such attacks?
2. Can I mix ISL and 802.1Q trunk connections?
3. Anything else I have to consider?

Thanks

edit:

Is VLAN-hopping possible if all hosts are connected to "Static Access"-configured switchports and the 802.1Q-trunks are only between the Cisco switches?

is there any possibility to have FreeBSD running virtual guests (Linux and Windows) apart from VirtualBox? Didn't find any recent information yet.