Voyager and the speed of whitebox development

We are thrilled to announce that, with the Cumulus Linux 3.6.2 release, the Facebook Voyager packet-optical device is now generally available. That’s certainly an exciting development as the industry’s first packet-optical whitebox, but I actually wanted to discuss something else: how we were able to get support for the device up and running so quickly and what that means for Cumulus Linux. There’s a large number of devices that we support, which are listed on our Hardware Compatibility List. Those devices, however, are all “normal” Ethernet devices. Usually we can get those to market rapidly, but Voyager was more complicated.

First, as you may know, Facebook Voyager is a device with a Broadcom Tomahawk chip supporting 12 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports as well as an additional 4 200 Gigabit DWDM ports supported from 2 Acacia AC400 modules (for more details on the underlying specifics, see the Voyager Tech Docs). I mention the chipset explicitly as that’s one of the most critical – and time-consuming – components to support as we port to a new device. In this case, of course, we already supported the Tomahawk, so that was an immediate “leg up” on the work.

Those Continue reading

NetDevOpEd: Automation – start small, dream big

I’ve seen a number of blogs and articles describing what network automation is and what it entails, and in many cases, the descriptions end up frightening people who haven’t yet started down an automation path. The biggest question when starting any of these sorts of projects is the simplest: should you automate at all?

My answer to that first question (Spoiler alert: it’s yes, but let me explain why) is that it depends on your network itself. For years, before I was involved with networking at the operating system level, I worked on network management and automation products. Often, I’d tell my customers that if they were happy with the status quo, then I certainly wouldn’t force them down a particular path or to use a particular product. However, if you’re a bit fed up with the manual steps involved in updating a device operating system or configuring a device, then you should look into automation to save yourself time and headaches. Of course, if you only have three devices and they get updated yearly, maybe don’t bother. But if you believe automation will provide the solutions you’re looking for, there are some first steps for automation that you Continue reading