Announcement: Cumulus recognized by both our employees & customers

It’s not every day you get recognized. But to get recognized TWICE in one day? Now that’s a rare experience. We’re thrilled to announce that Cumulus Networks has been recognized with both the FORTUNE 2018 50 Best Small and 100 Medium Size Companies to Work For award, as well as  Gartner Customers’ Choice for Data Center Networking.

With recognition like this, we’re taking time to celebrate and appreciate the awesome and talented people we get to work with every day.

Cumulus awarded as a FORTUNE 2018 50 Best Small and 100 Medium Size Companies to Work For

The Fortune award is one of the most prestigious and for good reason — Their rigorous methodology focuses on more than just benefits and office snacks. According to their 2017 methodology statement:

All employees were invited to participate in the survey, which is designed to reveal whether the organization is consistently a great place to work for all its people. Meaning: Do employees trust the people they work for? Are they treated fairly and with respect? Are people proud of their work? Do they enjoy the folks they work with? Are great experiences available to everyone – or does it Continue reading

Taking EVPN & open networking to new heights with Broadcom Trident3 and Cumulus Linux

As highlighted in our recent press release, Cumulus Networks and Broadcom are expanding their commitment to open networking by introducing support of Cumulus Linux to the widely successful Broadcom Trident3  The Trident3-based switches will be available with Cumulus Linux in the Fall of 2018.

When Trident3 came to the market it offered a fully programming packet processing silicon as well as improved power efficiency. It’s additional benefit was a broad range of scalability, starting at 200 Gbps of throughput scaling all the way up to 3.2 Tbps on a single chip.

We are thrilled to have the world’s most powerful open network operating system, Cumulus Linux, now running on this innovative Broadcom chip. I see three benefits of utilizing these two solutions in data center networking 1) Simplified EVPN, 2) Scalable VXLAN, and 3) investment protection.

1. Simplified EVPN operations

   With the Cumulus and Trident3 EVPN implementation, teams can utilize well-understood and simple networking protocols like BGP to effortlessly build a highly scalable, layer-3-routed, underlay fabric for different address families, including IPv4, IPv6 and EVPN routes. EVPN will automatically set up neighbors, discover information, and exchange that information among nodes. With just a few lines of code, you can Continue reading

Network disaggregation facilitates datacenter and IT modernization [Whitepaper]

We recently partnered with DellEMC to bring you a new IDC whitepaper focused on one of the most critical and relevant considerations for today’s data center leaders and operators. In How Network Disaggregation Facilitates Datacenter and IT Modernization, IDC discusses how digital transformation and the prioritization and modernization of applications are putting pressure on business infrastructure, specifically the network, to modernize and optimize for the digital era.

In brief, the IT world has changed rapidly around the network, demanding automation, scalability and agility. But the network has remained unchanged — monolithic, stagnant and inflexible. The implications for businesses now are not just technological support but economical as well. An inflexible network becomes expensive to scale at the speed of customer expectations and business innovation. Business innovation puts pressure on data centers to offer extensive automation of the entire network life cycle, from provisioning and deployment to day-to-day management and upgrades.

With IT transformation initiatives taking place everywhere to support application needs, the time is now to leverage those initiatives to reassess network architectures and operational models. Network disaggregation is a key architectural step forward to help organizations meet these challenges by offering unprecedented flexibility and agility to support end-to-end Continue reading

Cumulus customer highlight

Behind each Cumulus customer is an awesome story about the future of open networking. These companies are forward thinkers who know that web-scale is the best solution for their network — enabling flexibility, reducing TCO, increasing efficiency — but it’s more than just our innovation. When we begin working with our customers, we get to see what innovations they’re driving, and recognize how we now fit into their story. We wanted to take a moment to highlight a few of our newer case studies that have been published and highlight the awesome work that these organizations have accomplished.

iNNOVO Cloud
iNNOVO Cloud truly blew us away with one of the most energy efficient data centers in the world. They decided to run everything as an L3/IP fabric and not have large layer 2 domains (music to our ears). Partnering with OpenStack and Kubernetes, iNNOVO built an environment that brings efficiency and scale to their cloud and blockchain services. In fact, they reduced the time to configure switches by 83%. How’s that for increased efficiency? The best part is that their data center is all about sustainability and they’ve gone above and beyond your average infrastructure. Here’s a hint: think shipping Continue reading

Announcing our second year on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking

We couldn’t be happier to report that Cumulus Networks has been placed on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking in the Visionaries category — for the second year in a row. This acknowledgement and honor once again solidifies not only our place in the industry, but also open networking’s place as a whole. The report states, “Cumulus continues to pioneer a vision based on open components, disaggregation of switching hardware/software and automation.” We couldn’t agree more, and we’re excited to be driving the industry forward into efficiency, flexibility, simplicity and innovation.

Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking gives an assessment of the current data center networking solutions for enterprises, and evaluates where they fall on ability to execute as well as completeness of vision. Without further ado, here is this year’s quadrant:

A few key highlights: 

• Cumulus was mentioned continually throughout the report in relation to hardware support, enterprise growth and leaders in the disaggregation and open networking movement. Most notably, Gartner highlighted our growth with enterprise customers, which helped us differentiate ourselves on the quadrant from other vendors. The report states, “Cumulus grew its enterprise customer count by more than 200 over the past Continue reading

Welcoming Cisco to disaggregation

Earlier this week, Cisco announced that they will be offering a disaggregated solution with their Cisco IOS XR and Nexus operating systems (1). It’s true, the same organization that claimed to have killed white-box networking is jumping on the bandwagon three years later.

Open networking is no longer just the future

It’s now a requirement in today’s innovative data centers. Cumulus was founded on the notion that the future of data center networking is disaggregation, that the industry should be open and that innovation will only prevail when open networking does. The fact that one more incumbent vendor has acknowledged this notion about where the industry is headed only validates our vision. The future of networking truly is here, and we welcome Cisco to the club — really!

In the last few years, and even last several months, we’ve seen open networking takeoff. From the moment we helped bring ONIE to the market back in 2013, we knew things were going to change in the industry. Since then, we’ve seen the list of participating hardware vendors grow like crazy and our customer base grow with them. We’ve seen web-scale companies like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and more contribute to the Continue reading

The Free Range Routing Project turns one: A year in review, and what to expect next

Today, we’re celebrating the one year anniversary of FRR: The Free Range Routing project, a project we at Cumulus Networks set out to collaborate on with innovators in the industry to help shape the future of web-scale networking. With FRRouting (FRR), the community has built on the foundations of Quagga and taken huge steps forward to build the most full-featured, high-performance open routing stack available — making engineers’ lives significantly easier in the process. Now, FRR is the easiest and quickest way for the community to contribute to the future of routing.

To honor its success and growth, we’d like to highlight a few key moments in time since the project began…

Increased adoption and contribution

As we set out to expand the technology, we knew we needed a team of industry leaders. Companies like 6WIND, Architecture Technology Corporation, LabN Consulting, NetDEF (OpenSourceRouting) and Orange were some of the first to collaborate with us at Cumulus Networks on the project’s mission.

At Cumulus, we knew that FRR was going to be a game-changer for our own customers, so we too adopted FRR on Cumulus Linux. Now, all 1,000+ of our customers are benefiting from a more flexible infrastructure.

Over Continue reading

Building vs. buying your engineering staff

Should I build it or buy it? It’s an age old question often used in reference to furniture, websites and risky home remodeling projects (DIY is fun, I swear!). Same goes for your engineering team — should I hire and build out an engineering staff or should I outsource an engineering team?

According to a 2016 study done by Deloitte, 72% of organizations with over $1 billion in revenue are outsourcing their IT functions. However, only 31% of them plan to increase this spending in the following year. Could this allude to investments for inhouse staff? Maybe. In the following paragraphs, we will discuss the pros and cons of creating an inhouse vs. outsourcing engineering staff.

Building vs. buying engineering — two methods

Let’s start with some simple definitions.

Building an engineering team: We’re talking about hiring people. When I say building, I mean recruiting talent, hiring them full time, offering benefits and keeping them engaged with exciting projects. I also mean hiring experts in the field who are lifelong learners and are excited about innovation. In time, they give back to the company through their developed expertise, loyalty and institutional knowledge. Those are your people.

Buying an engineering Continue reading

EVPN’s 4 critical benefits for digital transformation

Digital transformation demands more of everything: speed, throughput, agility and scalability. That’s why organizations are rethinking traditional layer 2 switched data center architectures and moving towards intelligent layer 3 routed network designs. With a layer 3 architecture, your data center can use proven routing protocols to simplify troubleshooting, facilitate upgrades, scale efficiently and converge traffic.

But what about the applications, storage appliances and multi-tenant environments that still require traditional layer 2 connectivity? Legacy protocols that enable layer 2 traffic to run over a layer 3 routed infrastructure have significant limitations that become serious obstacles when the data center must scale, accommodate multiple vendors’ systems or support multi-tenancy. Fortunately, there’s a scalable, simple, non-proprietary solution. Enter EVPN.

Cumulus’ unique Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN) Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) solution offers unmatched interoperability and efficiency. By adding VXLAN distributed routing, Cumulus EVPN undoes all of the complications of layer 2 connectivity and frees you from reliance on proprietary controllers. Looking for proof that EVPN delivers on that promise? We’ve got plenty of evidence, so here’s four major advantages of utilizing EVPN to meet the demands of digital transformation.

1) Accommodate growth without disruption

With Cumulus EVPN, you can quickly and Continue reading

Automation won’t cost you your job — it could save it

If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you probably do a lot of professional work with networking, manage an enterprise data center or play around with networks as a hobby (if you don’t, close your eyes for just a moment and imagine yourself in a well air-conditioned data center). You also likely know about the day-to-day tasks that maintaining a network requires, and how much time they take out of the day. Or, perhaps you’re a director that’s trying to resolve the issues your networking team keeps having. Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a better way to tackle these daily problems? Sure, what you’re doing now works, but there’s so much else you could be doing if the management of these tasks were optimized. That’s where network automation solutions can step in and give you more free time than you could have dreamed of. Why automation? Well, let’s get into what problems it eliminates and the benefits it brings — you can thank us later!

Problem: A manually configured and operated network

A day in the life of a network engineer includes three layers of regular tasks. At the top, we have troubleshooting operation Continue reading

5 Ways you can leverage the Linux community for your data center network

Here at Cumulus, we often talk about the benefits of having an operating system on Linux (if you need to be re-schooled on the benefits of unifying the stack, head here). But something that possibly goes overlooked, or at least under appreciated, is the value of the Linux community itself. The community is made up of 50,000 or so engineers all passionate about learning, improving and creating code. People like to say that when you go with a Linux operating system, you’re “standing on the shoulder of giants,” meaning that you don’t only have to rely on your inhouse engineering team (even if they’re world-class engineers), but rather you’re relying on thousands of engineers, including some of the absolute best in the business. Since Cumulus Linux runs on Linux, our customers have this community at their disposal. So why does that really matter? Here are five reasons to consider.

1. Security

The most widely cited benefit of having a community of 50,000 behind you is security. Basically it looks something like this. Let’s say you’re with a proprietary vendor (*cough* Cisco *cough* Juniper *cough*), and there is a glitch in your latest package installation causing a security vulnerability. Maybe Continue reading

Getting started with Linux: the basics – part 3

In part 1 of our series on the basics of Linux, we learned how to download Linux, whether you should use the CLI or the GUI, how to get a SSH client, how to login to Linux, and how to get help.

In part 2 of our series, we learned how to know what type of Linux you are using and how to navigate the Linux file system.

In this final post in the series, you’ll learn about Linux files, Linux permissions, Linux package management, and how to install applications in Linux.

Files and permissions

Let’s say that a user named “david” was denied access to the file /var/log/syslog. The reason for that is likely the user “david” doesn’t have permission to access to the file.

You can see this if you execute ls -l /var/log/syslog:

david@debian:~$ ls -l /var/log/syslog
-rw-r----- 1 root adm 9074 May 15 10:17 /var/log/syslog

The file is owned by the user “root” and the group “adm”. The file permissions are “rw” (shorthand for read/write) for the owner and “r” (shorthand for “read”) for the group with no permissions for anyone else. The graphic below shows how file permissions work in Linux.

In the file permissions Continue reading

Getting started with Linux: the basics – part 2

In part 1 of our series about getting started with Linux, we learned how to download Linux, whether you should use the CLI or the GUI, how to get a SSH client, how to login to Linux and how to get help. In this post, you’ll learn how to know what type of Linux you are using and how to navigate the Linux file system.

How do I know what type of Linux I am using?

Because there are so many different types of Linux, you want to be sure you know what distribution and version you are using (for the sake of searching the right documentation on the Internet, if nothing else). Keep in mind a couple different commands to identify your Linux version.

The uname command shows the basic type of operating system you are using, like this:

david@debian:~$ uname -a
Linux debian 3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.43-2 (2017-04-30) i686 GNU/Linux

And the hostnamectl command shows you the hostname of the Linux server as well as other system information, like the machine ID, virtualization hypervisor (if used), operating system and Linux kernel version. Here’s an example:


david@debian:~$ hostnamectl
Static hostname: debian
Icon name: computer-vm
Continue reading

Getting started with Linux: the basics – part 1

Perhaps you’re a Windows admin who is interested in making the jump to Linux, or perhaps you are a Mac OS user who may soon be administering a Linux-based network. Either way, you need to know some of the basics of Linux, just to get started gaining some hands-on experience. In this post, that’s exactly what you’ll get!

Where do I get Linux?

To get started with Linux, you need to download a Linux distribution, such as RedHat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, CentOS or Cumulus Linux. You want to make sure that you obtain a Linux distribution that is compatible with your hardware. For example, you might select a 32-bit i386 image or a 64-bit amd64 image.

For example, if you want to start with the Debian distribution, you can download an ISO-formatted image that you would use to install Debian Linux.

While some people will want to run Linux directly on a physical server, desktop or laptop, many people start learning Linux for the first time by running it inside of a virtual machine. With a VM option, you can run Linux inside your existing Microsoft Windows or Apple macOS operating system using virtualization tools such as Continue reading

Understanding the architecture of the modern Linux operating system

Linux is cool and can do amazing things in the enterprise data center, whether it’s hosting a web app or acting as an Internet firewall. But what makes up the modern Linux OS? What are the many pieces and parts that make the Linux OS work? Before we answer those questions, let’s start by answering a few more basic questions about Linux architecture such as…

What is an operating system?

The short answer is that an operating system, or OS, is software that you load on your hardware to make it do things. Without an operating system, most hardware is useless. For example, you might have a Dell computer that runs the Windows 10 operating system from which you run your applications. You might have an iPhone that runs the iOS operating system. You may also have an Apple MacBook that runs the Apple macOS operating system. The operating systems on these hardware platforms are what enable them to run applications, as shown in the graphic.

What is a kernel, and what does it do?

The kernel is the special piece of the operating system that controls the CPU hardware, allocates memory, accesses data, schedules processes, runs the applications and Continue reading

Top benefits of using Linux in the modern enterprise

Let’s be honest. There are many enterprise data centers (and data center admins) who aren’t crazy about Linux. But most of that opposition comes from simply not understanding the benefits of Linux and not experiencing Linux hands-on. Fortunately, we’ve got a comprehensive guide to everything Linux that you can use to get familiar with the basics. Once you start testing out Linux for yourself and getting comfortable with it, I think you’ll find that Linux is the best operating system available today.

So what are the benefits, in general, of using Linux? Some of these benefits include:

• Consistent operating model. No matter what version or distribution of Linux you use, whether you’re on a supercomputer or a tiny embedded device, the general operation of Linux is the same no matter where you go. What this means is that, with some exceptions, the command line syntax is similar, process management is similar, basic network administration is similar, and applications can be (relatively) easily ported between distributions. The end result of this consistent operating model is a cost savings generated by greater staff efficiency and flexibility.
• Scalability. Linux is eminently scalable and is able to run on everything from wristwatches to supercomputers Continue reading

Cumulus Linux + Voyager — Bringing cost-effective scalability to internet infrastructure

We’re thrilled to announce that Facebook has partnered with Cumulus Networks to bring you the industry’s first open optical routing platform loaded with Cumulus Linux. That’s right, Cumulus Networks is branching into some exciting new territory (a new voyage… if you will). We couldn’t be more honored and excited to work closely with Facebook to bring scalability and cost-effective hardware and software to the optical space — an industry that is growing rapidly.

Bandwidth for Internet services is becoming a more tangible challenge every single day, but the current proprietary solutions are too expensive and do not scale. As Facebook explained, “the highest-performing ‘bandwidth and reach’ are still fiber-based technologies — in particular, switching, routing, and transport DWDM technologies.” With the popularity of services that require a lot of bandwidth, like VR and video, there has become a critical need for better backhaul infrastructure that is cost-effective and scalable and supports high-performing wireless connectivity. The issue becomes even more critical when considering a variety of geographic conditions. For instance, rural regions need long backhaul pipes, which is cost-prohibitive.

That’s where Voyager comes in. Voyager was designed to bring the Internet to everyone — from dense urban locations to remote Continue reading

Cumulus Networks inducted into JPMorgan Chase Hall of Innovation

Roll out the red carpet and get your acceptance speech ready — no, Rocket Turtle hasn’t won an Oscar (yet), but we do have some exciting news. Cumulus Networks is happy to announce that we have been inducted into the JPMorgan Chase Hall of Innovation, which recognizes select emerging tech companies for their innovation, business value and disruptive nature. The Hall of Innovation Award was presented at the 9th Annual J.P. Morgan Technology Innovation Symposium in Menlo Park, California.

Cumulus Networks has received this honor after providing JPMorgan Chase with our NOS Cumulus Linux. In fact, Cumulus Networks is currently the networking standard for Gaia, JPMorgan Chase’s private cloud, and is also pursuing other use cases within the firm. Matthew Liste, Head of Cloud Engineering, stated that “Cumulus Networks has helped the firm reduce capital expenditures, optimize data center network costs, and bring infrastructure to the market faster.” That’s the power of web-scale networking!

When asked for comment about our partnership with JPMorgan Chase, our fearless leader and CEO Josh Leslie had this to say: “For a company with the size and reputation of JPMorgan Chase, it is critical that the network operates with efficiency to keep the Continue reading

Your guide to selecting pluggable transceiver modules

The high-cost of vendor-locked optics has spawned a lot of ingenuity over the years as other ‘non-approved’ manufacturers build the same optics to the same spec and try to get them to work as a low-cost alternative to preferred ODMs. But the whitebox revolution has now leveled the playing field. Lower cost whitebox hardware can work with low-cost or high-cost optics, without discrimination based on manufacturer brand. In the case of a data center deployment, the cost savings of using lower cost optics can translate to millions of dollars.

As long as the box manufacturer and the optics manufacturer both build to industry standards — both formal and informal ones — optics from any manufacturer should be able to work on any box. Most of the implementation details are specified by standards. However, that doesn’t guarantee that you can pick any module on the internet, order a thousand units and have a successful deployment.

At Cumulus Networks, we do everything we can to ensure a smooth, easy deployment. We believe that one of the critical benefits of disaggregation is that it provides you with the ability to choose whatever hardware and software best suit your business needs.

When it comes Continue reading

Network automation best practices for DevOps

Optimizing a network for maximum efficiency almost always requires some level of automation. From provisioning resources to configuring processes and applications, network automation can improve upon the consistency of network operations while also reducing the resources needed to maintain the network. That being said, network automation can be exceedingly complex as well. Following network automation best practices is necessary to ensure that automation doesn’t interfere with or compromise the network.

Create a centralized hub for automated services

As networks grow, it can be tempting to add new services and tools one by one. Unfortunately, piecemeal additions can quickly become haphazard and difficult to maintain. Automated services should always be controlled through a single API or centralized hub, to improve upon reporting, maintenance, consistency and optimization.

Network automation suites have been developed to be robust enough that they can use the same code base for computing, networking, and storage, thereby significantly simplifying network optimization and other related processes. Ansible is one example of a network automation tool that can help you embrace DevOps as a network automation best practices, though there are many others. IT departments will find the process of automation easier to manage and maintain when filtered through a Continue reading