@CumulusNetworks Archives - Tech Field Day

Exploring the Broadcom Tomahawk 5 Chip and Its Impact on ASICs in Data Center Environments

In this article, Charles Uneze explores the Broadcom Tomahawk 5 Chip that they talked about during their presentation at Networking Field Day in September. “It’s great for supporting VxLAN and other protocols, and its recirculation feature allows for high bandwidth utilization.” Read his thoughts on his website.

Cumulus VX Spine and Leaf

In this post, Marina Ferreira details how she used the Cumulus Linux Demo Framework from Cumulus Networks to built her own spine and leaf architecture in about ten minutes. She was impressed by the amount of work being done in the background, even if the setup did require a bit of Linux backend knowledge. It also uses a Ansible playbook to push the configuration to the spine and leafs, as well as adding new interfaces. Along with a healthy amount of demos, she found this whiteboard session by Pete Lumbis at Networking Field Day to be invaluable.

Mellanox, Ixia and Cumulus: Part 3

At Networking Field Day, Mellanox presented with their partners Ixia and Cumulus Networks. John Herbert has been giving each company a look in a series of posts, with this final iteration looking at Cumulus. Based on Debian Linux, the company’s Cumulus Linux distribution offers some enticing features for a network operating system. It includes a broad range of hardware support from multiple vendors, and allows both network and linux admins to use the CLI they are most comfortable with for configuration. In the end, John concludes that it’s a “pretty sweet product.”

Mellanox, Ixia and Cumulus: Part 2

John Herbert continues his look at Mellanox’s presentation from Networking Field Day. In this post, he focuses on what he saw from the company’s partner, Ixia. He looks at their IxNetwork, which provides end-to-end network validation. John outlines the novel way IxNetwork does this, and why it could be particularly valuable to service providers.

Mellanox, Ixia and Cumulus: Part 1

John Herbert enjoyed hearing from Mellanox at Networking Field Day earlier this year. They were one of the “behind the scenes” companies that are pervasive, but often unnoticed. They made a case for their Spectrum / Spectrum 2 ASICs for white box vendors, noting considerable performance benefits over competitors.

Cumulus – Not Your Average Networking

Cumulus Networks presented at Networking Field Day recently with their partner Mellanox. Larry Smith reviews what he saw from the company. Cumulus takes a core Debian Linux OS, and optimizes it to allow network engineers to configure in CLI without having to learn specific Linux commands. The benefit of a Linux core is amplified because the OS supports almost any automation tool a network admin will need.

Cumulus Linux and NetQ

Richard McIntosh saw a presentation from a whitebox company for the first time at Networking Field Day in January, and it left an impression. Cumulus Networks presented on their Cumulus Linux and NetQ. What struck Richard is that the entire system is just a Linux distribution. This allows admins to use familiar tools for their networking, rather than have to adapt to a proprietary solution.

BiB 30: Mellanox, Ixia & Cumulus At NFD17 – VXLAN & Whitebox

In this episode of Briefings in Brief, Drew Conry-Murray and Greg Ferro discuss what they saw from Mellanox, Ixia and, Cumulus Networks at Networking Field Day last month. Mellanox reviewed their switch portfolio, which can run a third-party OS like Cumulus Networks’ Cumulus Linux network OS. Ixia showed off IxNetwork, their flagship testing suite.

Off the Cuff – NFD17 Wrap Up

In the most recent “Off the Cuff” episode of Network Collective, the crew discussed what they saw at Networking Field Day last week. What happens when six delegates sit on a podcast together? Magic!

Networking Field Day 17: Hawt or Naught

WIth Networking Field Day in the rearview mirror, Chris Grundemann looks back at some of the trends from the presenters. He breaks down what’s in and out, and includes a lot of animated GIFs as a bonus!

Networking Field Day 17 (NFD17) Redux

John Herbert shares his parting thoughts from Networking Field Day last week. He touches on the two dominant themes he saw from the presenters, ever increasing automation and an emphasis on telemetry. He shares his favorite presentations as well. Make sure to watch the recorded video of the presentations to see for yourself.

Cisco, Mellanox, Ixia and Cumulus: Last Day of NFD17!

It may be his ninth Networking Field Day event, but John Herbert found a lot to be excited about at his most recent event. If you missed any of the presentations, be sure to check out our full video from each company. There’s lots of interesting presentations on automation, network fabrics, and hybrid cloud services.

Network Field Day 17: Mark Your Calendars!

Drew Conry-Murray and Greg Ferro from Packet Pushers will be at Networking Field Day next week. They’ll get to drink from the firehouse of presenting companies over the three day event. Remember to follow along on our live stream and tweet out questions with #NFD17.

WISP/FISP Design – Building your future MPLS network with whitebox switching

IP Infusion presented at Networking Field Day in April. Here, Kevin Myers discusses the role of whitebox in a WISP/FISP MPLS core and compares whitebox to the traditional vendor. He also says, “whitebox is poised for rapid growth in the network world, as the climate is finally becoming favorable – even in larger companies – to use commodity hardware and not be entirely dependent on incumbent network vendors.”

Cumulus Networks Walks A Fine Line With New Switch Hardware

Drew Conry-Murray looks at the implications of Cumulus Networks announcement of Cumulus Express. This is a program whereby Cumulus will sell switch hardware with their Cumulus Linux distribution pre-installed. Drew found it a little surprising that a company that made its name pitching disaggregation would take the approach. He reviews what they’re offering in the product line, and how recent announcements from hardware vendors could use their switch operating system.

Moving Ones & Zeros: Current Trends in DC Networking

Ryan Booth’s DeLorean takes him back to the Cumulus Networks presentation from Networking Field Day in February 2015. He then goes into detail on using Cumulus Linux as a routing platform. Setup is actually closer to a Debian server than a standard network switch. The overall thrust is to take tools already in use by application and server groups to make automating network deployment dramatically easier. This is a wonderfully detailed how-to article and gives the reader all they need to know to get started networking with Cumulus Linux.