Wednesday, June 3, 2015

sFlow: Sampling rates

From http://blog.sflow.com/2009/06/sampling-rates.html:



Sampling rates


A previous posting discussed the scalability and accuracy of packet sampling and the advantages of packet sampling for network-wide visibility.

Selecting a suitable packet sampling rate is an important part of configuring sFlow on a switch. The table gives suggested values that should work well for general traffic monitoring in most networks. However, if traffic levels are unusually high the sampling rate may be decreased (e.g. use 1 in 5000 instead of 1 in 2000 for 10Gb/s links).

Configure sFlow monitoring on all interfaces on the switch for full visibility. Packet sampling is implemented in hardware so all the interfaces can be monitored with very little overhead.

Finally, select a suitable counter polling interval so that link utilizations can be accurately tracked. Generally the polling interval should be set to export counters at least twice as often as the data will be reported (see Nyquist-Shannon sampling theory for an explanation). For example, to trend utilization with minute granularity, select a polling interval of between 20 and 30 seconds. Don't be concerned about setting relatively short polling intervals; counter polling with sFlow is very efficient, allowing more frequent polling with less overhead than is possible with SNMP.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

How to Convert a PFX (PKCS#12) SSL Certificate to Separate KEY and CRT Files


I've had to look this up a number of times, so I'm posting it here for posterity.

source: http://www.markbrilman.nl/2011/08/howto-convert-a-pfx-to-a-seperate-key-crt-file/

`openssl pkcs12 -in [yourfile.pfx] -nocerts -out [keyfile-encrypted.key]`

What this command does is extract the private key from the .pfx file. Once entered you need to type in the importpassword of the .pfx file.  This is the password that you used to protect your keypair when you created your .pfx file.  If you cannot remember it anymore you can just throw your .pfx file away, cause you won’t be able to import it again, anywhere!.  Once you entered the import password OpenSSL requests you to type in another password, twice!. This new password will protect your .key file.

Now let’s extract the certificate:

`openssl pkcs12 -in [yourfile.pfx] -clcerts -nokeys -out [certificate.crt]`

Just press enter and your certificate appears.

Now as I mentioned in the intro of this article you sometimes need to have an unencrypted .key file to import on some devices.  I probably don’t need to mention that you should be careful. If you store your unencrypted keypair somewhere on an unsafe location anyone can have a go with it and impersonate for instance a website or a person of your company.  So always be extra careful when it comes to private keys! Just throw the unencrypted keyfile away when you’re done with it, saving just the encrypted one.

The command:

`openssl rsa -in [keyfile-encrypted.key] -out [keyfile-decrypted.key]`

Notes:
- When you first extract the key, apply a new password (probably the same as you used to extract it) and then create an unencrypted key with the rsa command above
- Use an encrypted key file for NGINX otherwise it'll ask for the password every time it is restarted.
- Check the top of the extract .crt file for extra bits above the ----BEING... line and remove if necessary
- This certificated needs to be concatenated with the full chain of certificate authorities `cat domain.crt CA_bundle.crt > final.crt`
- test the cert with `openssl s_client -showcerts -connect www.domain.com:443`

Addendum:

To convert a PFX file to a PEM files:

`openssl pkcs12 -in [yourfile.pfx] -out [certificate.pem] -clcerts`

`openssl pkcs12 -in [yourfile.pfx] -out [cacerts.pem] -cacerts`

To convert a PFX file to a combined PEM file in one step AND remove encryption:

'openssl pkcs12 -in [yourfile.pfx] -out [decrypted.pem] -nodes'