> This appliance can connect to a VSWITCH? Yes. It will tolerate both layer 2 and layer 3 VSWITCHes.
> And how will my > SMTP talk to it? Over CTC? HS? What we suggest for front-ending these older VM TCP services is that you get another IP address from your networking folks (just one is fine), attach that to our firewall appliance (I'll also put that up), and define two private VSWITCHes or GLANs as internal bus networks. You attach a interface from the VM TCPIP stack to the 2nd VSWITCH. You attach the SMTP appliance to the "outside" VSWITCH put an additional interface on the same VSWITCH as the VM TCPIP stack. Use 192.xxx or 172.xxx addresses for the internal VSWITCHes. You log into the appliance and edit /etc/exim/config and insert your SMTP auth credentials in the appropriate places (comments in the file tell you where), and then /etc/init.d/exim restart. You can test it by punching a BSMTP file to the RDR of the Linux appliance; if it's delivered, you win. Once you're happy with it, you configure the IPMAILERADDRESS in the VM SMTP configuration to point to the IP of the Linux appliance on the internal VSWITCH (so no unprotected traffic ever leaves your machine), and you're off to the races. It sounds complicated, but once this is all in place, you can start front-ending FTP, NFS, etc, etc with modern versions that are directly what the networking guys are used to (and they can help you configure them to work Just Like Everyone Else). Takes away any complaining about the VM system being "weird" or "not compatible", and gets the job done while we all wait for IBM to have spare cycles to update the basic TCP services.
