Cumulus content roundup: September 2019

And with that, September has come and gone. Did you miss some of the great content we published? In true Cumulus Networks fashion, we’ve made it easy for you to catch up on all the blog posts and articles we had to offer below so take a moment to settle in and then dive into all things open networking!

From Cumulus Networks:

How open standards help with defense in depth:Networking is a vital part of security, and of defense in depth in particular. So how would open standards help this approach to InfoSec? Read this blog to learn.

EVPN-PIM: BUM optimization using PIM-SM: Does “PIM” make you break out into hives? You’re not alone. In part one of a two part blog series we talk about using PIM-SM to optimize BUM flooding in a L2-VNI with single VTEPs.

EVPN-PIM: Anycast VTEPs: In part one we learned about EVPN-PIM. This second part of the two-part blog series we throw MLAG into the mix and break down the additional procedures needed for it.

News from the web:

The future of networks: switching to 100G: Pete Lumbis shares five tips on changing to 100G networking in the latest Continue reading

Cumulus content roundup: Summer 2019

Summer has flown by and you may have missed some of the great content that was published. Don’t worry, you can catch up on some of our favorite podcasts, blog posts, and articles below. So settle in and then dive into all things open networking!

From Cumulus Networks:

Customizing your network: Take a quick look at the types of automation available in Linux, from basic to dynamic, and how these automation capabilities help to enable data center-wide orchestration here.

Kernel of Truth podcast: Network monitoring: When it comes to network monitoring, have you run into a “switch that cried wolf?”Kernel of Truth host Brian O’Sullivan is joined by two new guests to the podcast Justin Betz & Faye Ly to chat more about networking monitoring here.

Best practices: MLAG backup IP: We cover the best ways to build a redundant backup IP link for multi-chassis link aggregation (MLAG).

Exploring Batfish with Cumulus – part one: With Batfish supporting Cumulus Networks this year, we show how it can fit into pipelines & replace or complement existing testing strategies in part one of a two-part series.

Kernel of Truth podcast: Innovation in the data center: Spiderman aka Rama Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 12: Innovation in the data center

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In this podcast we have an in-depth conversation about the different types and levels of innovation in the data center and where we see it going. Spiderman aka Rama Darbha and host Brian O’Sullivan are joined by a new guest to the podcast, VP of Marketing Ami Badani. They share that while innovation in the data center doesn’t appear sexy, outside of network engineers, in reality there has been a huge paradigm shift in the way data centers have built and operated last 3 years. So what does that mean? How is automation involved in this conversation? Listen here to find out.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 11: Network monitoring

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Don’t let your switch be the one who called wolf! Network monitoring is a hot topic here at Cumulus Networks and to talk about it more, host Brian O’Sullivan is joined by two new guests to the podcast Justin Betz and Faye Ly. They sit down to chat about the evolution of monitoring, the challenges in achieving robust monitoring and visibility, and what does it even mean to have “good network monitoring and visibility?” Listen, learn and hopefully enjoy!

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

Faye Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 10: Practical open networking

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But wait, there’s more! If you keep up with our podcast you may have noticed the previous episode where we talk about what open networking was, so why are we chatting about it again? Last time we talked about having open API’s and having the demarcation point between components but in this podcast, we’re extending the conversation out to show how everyone can take advantage of open networking in a wider, practical sense. Guests Rama Darbha and Roopa Prabhu join host Brian to share their thoughts, experiences and expertise on the subject. Listen, enjoy, and feel free to comment away here or on our social media channels if you have any questions or thoughts to add.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 9: Open Networking in 2019

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We had a couple of weeks off but we’re back in action, bringing to you a podcast about what makes up open networking in 2019. We took a different approach than normal this time and have guests both from sales & engineering here to discuss the different things they’re seeing from their respective “worlds” with the hopes of bridging the gap between the two of them for you. Joining host Brian is Andreas la Quiante, calling in from Germany no less, and representing the “sales” side of the conversation. On the engineering side, we have some folks you might recognize from previous podcasts: Roopa Prabhu and David Ahern. With that intro out of the way, now is the time to sit down, relax and listen to their conversation here. We hope you enjoy it!

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided Continue reading

Validation vibes: How we’ve won the praise of customers and employees alike

The success of a company is often defined by two key factors: how your customers feel about you and how your employees feel about you. We’re excited to share that recently we’ve had some great validation by both!

Customer validation

We’re very honored to work with a variety of innovative companies that are breaking the status quo with open networking principles in data centers designed to scale. All of our customers have realized the need for an open, modern data center and are looking to build infrastructure with purpose. From web-scale giants to visionary enterprises, we give them all the ability to build something “EPIC.”

This was recently highlighted when for the second year in a row, our customers have rallied around our vision for the future of data center networking and recognized us as “The Best Data Center Networking 2019” with their reviews through Gartner Peer Insights.

As Gartner puts it, “The Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice is a recognition of vendors in this market by verified end-user professionals, taking into account both the number of reviews and the overall user ratings.” To ensure fair evaluation, Gartner maintains rigorous criteria for recognizing vendors with Continue reading

Cumulus content roundup: May

May is well in the books and summer seems to be in full swing with recent heatwaves across the country. Since we know life can get pretty busy and you may have missed some of May’s great content, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite podcasts, blog posts, and articles for you here. So settle in, hopefully, stay cool, and get ready for all things open networking!

From Cumulus Networks:

Minipack Highlight Video from OCP Summit: Listen to Brian O’Sullivan & Michael Lane, VP of Business Development at Edgecore Networks discuss the recently launched Minipack, open, modular switch.

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 7: Certifications: Listen as we discuss the value of certifications, if any, what works for certifications and what doesn’t, who should be taking certifications and more!

Installing Cumulus packages on air-gapped equipment: Check out this excerpt to help you get additional packages into an air-gapped environment for the install where you don’t have a repo or mirror available to pull from.

ngrok on Cumulus Linux: If you have a good idea of what ngrok is and what it does, here are step-by-step instructions for turning up ngrok ssh services on Cumulus Linux.

The Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 8: Network of pods

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You’ve probably heard of HCI (hyper-converged infrastructure), and we’ve chatted out it before on an earlier episode here but have you heard of “Network of pods?” Kernel of Truth host Brian O’Sullivan and “resident jam band man” JR Rivers have a great conversation about what pod architecture is and how is it relevant to you so be sure to queue it up and listen!

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

JR Rivers: JR is a co-founder and CTO of Cumulus Networks where he works on Continue reading

The future of HCI

You may have noticed already but HCI has been on our minds lately. We’ve talked about it in-depth in our recent white paper and JR Rivers, Cumulus Networks co-founder & CTO, has shared more about it in relation to a network of pods in his on-demand webinar. JR will share more about his take in an upcoming Kernel of Truth podcast episode but in the meantime, we’ll get Naveen Chhabra’s, a senior industry analyst at Forrester, opinion on the future of HCI.

We sat down with him recently to discuss this and here’s what he had to say.

Question: Why is the network such a critical consideration in any hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) deployment?

Let’s look at the major transformational projects the organizations globally are working on. One project that spans all organizations, verticals, and geographies is digital transformation. IT leaders upgrade or acquire new technologies to support these projects. One pertinent issue across a large percentage of projects is that these are still focused on technology silos.

Specific to HCI, organizations have successfully collapsed the compute and storage silo. Network infrastructure is still not integrated to the extent that it could and should be. Firms have the capability, via HCI, Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 7: Certifications

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In a recent podcast, we talked with our friend Angelo Luciani from Nutanix about the value of being part of a community and what that can mean for your career. We continue along that train of thought in this podcast but pivot over to the topic industry certifications. Host Brian talks again to Nick Mitchell and Eric Pulvino, two of our consultants who’ve not only taken certifications throughout their career but worked on and helped to create our open networking certification. Listen as they discuss the value of them, if any, what works for certifications and what doesn’t, who should be taking certifications and more!

As Brian mentions in the podcast, we have a social game going on for 2019 where you can win some fun prizes. Part of the game includes some flash give-aways of free CCOMP certification exam registration and more!  Head over to our EPIC Year Game page to learn more or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so Continue reading

Cumulus content roundup: April

You know we like to stay busy here at Cumulus Networks, and April was no exception! We’ve rounded up some of our favorite podcasts, blog posts, and articles in case you missed them. So settle in and get ready for all things open networking!

From Cumulus Networks:

RIP up your dynamic routing with OSPF: Let’s RIP right into the ins and outs of Routing Information Protocol and Open Shortest Path First in this blog post by Keith Ward. Here we’ll discuss all things IGPs, history of RIPS and what you need to know about OSPFs.

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 5: The power of community: Grab a pair of headphones and tune into Season 2 Episode 5 of our podcast, Kernel of Truth. In this episode, Brian O’ Sullivan talks with Angelo Luciani from Nutanix and our own Pete Lumbis about the power of community and self-service. Learn about the resources available surrounding building community and the importance of it all.

Cumulus NetQ Reinvented
Did you hear the news? We are pleased to announce the launch of our newest product, Cumulus NetQ! Cumulus NetQ is a highly-scalable, modern network operations toolset that provides visibility into and troubleshooting Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 6: Infrastructure as code

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Our consultants are often the first to hear about trends and issues that customers and the industry as a whole are seeing and dealing with. Recently we’ve found that quite a few were unaware of what “infrastructure as code” is so we thought, let’s demystify it for everyone! Host Brian talks to Nick Mitchell and Eric Pulvino, two of our consultants who have first-hand knowledge about the topic and share not only what it is but what the problems infrastructure as code is solving for and why you should care! As you listen beware, there may be a “dad joke” and an attempt at Buzzword Bingo along the way. Apparently, it can’t be helped when you’re talking about “git.”

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 5: The power of community

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Click here for our previous episode.

From developer days to hackathons and from events to forums, Slack and social media included- there’s a community out there waiting for you! In this episode, host Brian talks to community evangelist for Nutanix Angelo Luciani and our own Pete Lumbis about the power of community and self-service. What are the perks, both personally and professionally, that you get when you’re actively participating in a community? What are some communities and resources we’ve found useful? Grab a taco, listen and find out. We promise you’ll get the taco reference after listening.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German Continue reading

Cumulus content roundup: March

Did you feel like you missed any of our great blogs or podcasts this month? We had a lot of great ones to choose from in our March content roundup and on top of that, we had a lot of great industry articles and videos we shared that you can easily access below too! Spend a minute or two, or maybe even sixty to digest it all and increase your overall knowledge. Happy trails!

From Cumulus Networks:

Cumulus Networks is excited to announce being the first to power Facebook’s next generation, open modular platform, Minipack: With this news being announced at the recent OCP Summit 2019, we provided this helpful blog with links to everything you need to know about the announcement including data sheets etc.

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 3: Storage solutions: Ask & you shall receive! A question asking “what are middle-tier customers doing for storage” came across our path & we thought hey, let’s tap a couple of experts to answer this one. Listen as David Iles from Mellanox Technologies discusses this with our own Peter Lumbis & host Brian O’Sullivan here.

The multicloud we need, but not the one we deserve: How can you take advantage of multi-cloud deployments without completely ditching Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 4: Integrated network telemetry

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Telemetry, is it cool or not? Host Brian tries to wrangle in JR Rivers and Scott Raynovich to find out in our latest episode. Will he succeed? Or, more importantly, what does integrated networking telemetry mean and why should you care? Listen and find out although pro tip: make sure you listen to the whole episode to find out what surprising band JR has been listening to.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

Scott Raynovich: Scott is the Founder and Principal Analyst at Futuriom. Founded in Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 3: Storage solutions

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You asked for it, we listened, and now we’re delivering! This episode, host Brian calls on Pete Lumbis and special guest David Illes from Mellanox to answer a question we got on our community Slack channel: “What are middle-tier customers doing for storage of Cumulus enabled solutions?” David and Pete share not only what’s changing for middle-tier customers but also tackle the topic of storage solutions in general. What sort of things are we seeing as customers migrate to Ethernet storage? Listen and find out.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him Continue reading

Cumulus content roundup: February

It’s time to officially unveil our Cumulus content roundup- February edition! In case you missed any of the content from the last month we, naturally, have you covered with links to it all below. Dig into the latest and greatest resources and news including two great podcasts that we recommend you queue up and listen to during your commute.

From Cumulus Networks:

How to make CI/CD with containers viable in production: Software-defined infrastructure is no longer a nice to have. It’s an absolute must using modern development approaches, such as CI/CD, containers, etc.

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 1- EVPN on the host: Guess who’s back? Back again? The real Kernel of Truth is back with season 2 and we’re starting off this season with all things EVPN! This topic is near and dear to Attilla de Groots’ heart having talked about it in his recent blog here. He now joins Atul Patel and our host Brian O’Sullivan to talk more about EVPN on host for multi-tenancy.

BGP: What is it, how can it break, and can Linux BGP fix it?: Border Gateway Protocol is one of the most important protocols on the internet. Linux BGP allows for in-depth monitoring and Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 2: The future of the Linux Kernel

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This episode, host Brian is joined by two of our in-house Linux Kernel experts David and Roopa. Joining them is Attilla who, like many of you, is curious about what’s coming down the line in regards to the Linux Kernel. Since they’re working ahead of everyone, what can we look forward to in the future? We promise you won’t need a crystal ball to find out, just listen here!

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

David Ahern is a Member of Technical Staff at Cumulus Networks. He traded Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 1: EVPN on the host

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Click here for our previous episode.

Guess who’s back? Back again? The real Kernel of Truth podcast is back with season 2 and we’re starting off this season with all things EVPN! This topic is near and dear to Attilla de Groots’ heart having talked about it in his recent blog here. He now joins Atul Patel and our host Brian O’Sullivan to talk more about EVPN on host for multi-tenancy.

Join as we as discuss the problem that we’re solving for, how to deploy EVPN on the host, what the caveats are when deploying and more.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German Continue reading