Containers vs. hypervisors: A death knell for hypervisors?

Containers vs. hypervisors: the battle is ongoing, but the two technologies don’t need to be pitted against one another—in fact, they each offer benefits that are more suitable for certain workloads than others.

Containers are considered resilient, in part, because they can be deployed both as classic monolithic applications as well as highly composable microservices. They are portable, and can be scaled up or down and deleted when no longer needed. Among many other benefits, containers pack more applications into a single physical server than a virtual machine (VM) is capable of, which means they are superior if you need the maximum amount of applications on a bare minimum number of servers.

When it comes to hypervisors in our current technology climate, their value seems to be slowly diminishing—and containers continue to enjoy a steady increase in popularity. Part of VM’s decline is due to resource allocation: they use a lot of system resources, requiring a full copy of the OS and a virtual copy of the hardware that the OS needs to run, while containers only need the supporting libraries required to run a specific program.

Furthermore, VM’s don’t provide the same level of portability, consistency, or speed that Continue reading

Introducing Host Pack — host software essentials for fabric-wide connectivity + visibility

From day one, Cumulus Networks has always believed in making data center networking easier and better. To us, that never stopped at just an operating system. Our goal has always been to unify the entire stack on Linux and bring web-scale principles to all aspects of the data center networking process — from network to operations; from host to switch. This was one of the many key drivers behind our introduction of NetQ, a fabric validation system designed to make network operator’s lives easier by ensuring the network is behaving as intended. Today, we launch the next critical step in web-scale networking — Cumulus Host Pack.

Host Pack offers software essentials that bring the host into the network. It optimizes visibility and connectivity into Cumulus Linux network fabric from end to end. Your entire stack can now be unified with the same language and the same tooling using the Linux networking model. Host Pack ensures real-time reliability and uptime to the container by leveraging NetQ to enhance visibility of the host. In addition to visibility, Host Pack enhances network scalability and connectivity by enabling the host to be part of the layer 3 network, while completely supporting popular layer 2 Continue reading

4 tips for managing big data from IoT in your network

Big Data and the Internet of Things. The two seem to go hand in hand, even if there are some important differences between them. As IoT becomes a greater reality, it’s important that your network devops team is ready for its huge impact on your systems and networks. In this post, we’ll cover the basics, like the difference between big data and the Internet of Things, and then we’ll go into more detail about how to ensure your network is managing big data from IoT effectively.

The Internet of Things: a hot topic

The Internet of Things has been a hot topic in recent years. Little wonder, since its potential is increasing daily. From Bluetooth accessible devices such as smart appliances and smart homes, to wearable technology, to smart cars, to energy plants and wind turbines, smart technology is growing fast. Along with this technology is the need to support these devices both in network and storage. By 2025 McKinsey expects IoT will generate $11.1 Trillion annually. Companies are rushing to find ways to capitalize on IoT and the big data it will generate.

Differences between the Internet of Things and big data

Big Data is an interesting concept Continue reading

Virtual networking optimization and best practices

Network optimization is an incredibly important component to scalability and efficiency. Without solid network optimization, an organization will be confronted with a quickly building overhead and vastly reduced efficiency. Network optimization aids a business in making the most of its technology, reducing costs and even improving upon security. Through virtualization, businesses can leverage their technology more effectively — they just need to follow a few virtual networking best practices.

Prioritize the most important applications

There are certainly applications that are optional, but there are others that are critical. The most important applications on a network are the ones that need to be prioritized in terms of system resources. These are generally cyber security suites, firewalls, and monitoring services. Optional applications may still be preferred for business operations, but because they aren’t critical they can still operate slowly in the event of system wide issues.

Prioritizing security applications is especially important as there are many cyber security exploits that operate with the express purpose of flooding the system until security elements fail. When security apps are prioritized, the risk of this type of exploit is greatly reduced.

Install application monitoring services

Application monitoring services will be able to automatically detect when Continue reading

Moving to a private cloud tips and considerations

There are a lot of reasons you may be thinking about moving to a private cloud environment. Perhaps you need more security, or maybe you feel the risks of public cloud have outweighed the benefits. But you’re still not certain that this version of web-scale networking is right for your company, and you’re wondering what’s involved in moving from a public cloud to a private one. Not surprisingly, there are several factors to consider when making the move from public to private clouds. Public clouds have their place, but there are many good reasons to switch. In this post we’ll covers some private cloud tips and considerations.

For an even deeper look at reasons you may want to switch to a private cloud, check out our education page, Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud.

Level set: Defining public, private and hybrid clouds

Private clouds take several different forms: semi-private cloud, virtual private cloud (hybrid), and fully private cloud. Each one has their advantages and disadvantages.

Semi-private clouds are similar to public clouds where the cloud is being hosted by a provider, but the access to the cloud is through private channels and not over the Internet. This reduces the problem of lag Continue reading

Cumulus content round up

To help you stay in the know on all things data center networking, we’ve gathered some of our favorite content from both our own publishing house and from around the web. We hope this helps you stay up to date on both your own skills and on data center networking trends. If you have any suggestions for next time, let us know in the comment section!

Our fav new pieces at Cumulus Networks

BGP in the data center: Are you leveraging everything BGP has to offer? Probably not. This practical report peels away the mystique of BGP to reveal an elegant and mature, simple yet sophisticated protocol. Author Dinesh Dutt, Chief Scientist at Cumulus Networks, covers BGP operations as well as enhancements that greatly simplify its use so that practitioners can refer to this report as an operational manual. Download the guide.

Magic Quadrant report:  Cumulus Networks has been named a “Visionary” in the Data Center Networking category for 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant. With 96% of their survey respondents finding open networking to be a relevant buying criterion and with the adoption of white-box switching to reach 22% by 2020, it’s clear that disaggregation is the answer for forward-looking companies. Continue reading

We created a culture of visionaries. Here’s how you can, too.

We’re both honored and thrilled to announce that Cumulus Networks has been recognized as a “Visionary” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking. You can download this highly-anticipated report here, and learn about other major trends in the industry.

So, what’s it mean to be a visionary? According to Gartner, “Visionaries have demonstrated an ability to increase the features in their offerings to provide a unique and differentiated approach to the market. A visionary has innovated in one or more of the key areas of data center infrastructure, such as management (including virtualization), security (including policy enforcement), SDN and operational efficiency, and cost reductions.”

We couldn’t be happier to be recognized, and to us, it means our company vision has paid off. We’ve created a culture of visionaries through inquisitive, innovative and bold leadership, and these same traits are seen in both our philosophy and our technology. As more and more organizations embrace web-scale IT, we expect to keep pushing the technology forward — always striving for a better network.

With 96% of Gartner’s survey respondents finding open networking to be a relevant buying criterion, and with the adoption of white-box switching to reach 22% by 2020, it’s Continue reading

OpenStack and Cumulus Linux: A match made in networking heaven

A few weeks ago, we attended the OpenStack Summit where we had a wonderful time connecting with customers, partners and several new faces. With the excitement of the event still lingering, we thought this was a great time to highlight how OpenStack and Cumulus Linux offer a unique, seamless solution for building a private cloud. But first, here are a few highlights from the conference.

OpenStack Summit 2017, Boston

• Jonathan Bryce, Executive Director at OpenStack Foundation, opened the show talking about the substantial growth of OpenStack over the past several years and how they are just one part of the vibrant open infrastructure community. A large focus of the conference was how organizations are moving towards private cloud environments as they realize it’s a better long-term solution.
• Throughout the conference, containers and Kubernetes were the hottest topics. Many sessions throughout the four days focused on these technologies and how organizations are looking to use them as an abstraction layer to make infrastructure less visible or locked-in.
• Edward Snowden was one of the most favorited speakers. Presenting from Russia, Snowden focused on how IT professionals are in position to influence how cloud infrastructure is built, influence the future of the internet Continue reading

Introducing NetQ — a fabric validation system providing unparalleled visibility

Today is a big day for us over here at Cumulus Networks! We are pleased to announce the launch of a brand new product designed to bring you unparalleled network visibility & remediation.  The newest addition to the Cumulus Networks portfolio, NetQ, is a telemetry-based fabric validation system that ensures the network is behaving as it was intended to. It allows you to test, validate and troubleshoot using advanced fabric-wide telemetry and Cumulus Linux.

Why NetQ?

To respond to the evolving industry, increasing business demands and growth, many companies have started the web-scale journey by deploying a fully programmable fabric with fully automated configurations across an open network infrastructure. Companies that have implemented some of these best practices are quickly seeing the benefits of agility, efficiency and lowered costs.

However, these organizations are also facing some unknowns: They are worried about making ad-hoc changes that disrupt the network and they can’t easily demonstrate “network correctness.” They’re interested in moving towards intent-based networking methods, but don’t have the right technology in place to do so.

Traditional operations tools and workflows weren’t built for the speed and scale that a modern cloud data center needs as they are manual, reactive and Continue reading

Cumulus co-founder featured on Packet Pushers!

A couple weeks ago, our co-founder, JR Rivers, sat down with the guys at Packet Pushers, in order to discuss how to build a better network with web-scale networking. We were so excited to be featured, that we decided to use this opportunity to launch a giveaway!

The podcast goes into detail covering the benefits of web-scale networking, but we want to hear your thoughts on it. We’ve put together a quick survey to hear what you think of web-scale principles and how you may have incorporated them into your organization. Simply fill out the survey to enter for a chance to win a free Apple Watch!

The podcast covers:

• The emergence of web-scale IT
• The traditional way of doing things and how it compares
• Free Range Routing
• Open networking and Linux
• How organizations can get to SDN
• The role of NetDevOps
• The how and why of automation

Sound interesting? Grab your headphones and take a listen! You can hear the podcast now by visiting PacketPushers.com

And don’t forget to enter to win an Apple Watch!

The post Cumulus co-founder featured on Packet Pushers! appeared first on Cumulus Networks Blog.

Announcing Cumulus Linux 3.3: Buffer monitoring, PIM-SSM + more!

We’re excited to announce the release of Cumulus Linux 3.3! This product update was designed to enhance the performance and usability of your network. This release includes several enhancements to many existing features, like NCLU and EVPN, as well as brand new features, like buffer monitoring, PIM-SSM, 25G support and more, for increased reliability. The following paragraphs cover the key updates in this release.

Buffer monitoring

Proactively detect congestion events that result in latency and jitter by monitoring traffic patterns to identify bottlenecks early and effectively plan for capacity. This new feature available on Mellanox hardware alerts for congestion & latency thresholds, helping you understand traffic patterns and model network operations based on buffer utilization data.

Ideal for customers using latency Sensitive Apps such as for HFT, HPC, distributed in-memory apps, buffer monitoring will allow you to proactively detect congestion events that result in latency and jitter by monitoring traffic patterns to identify bottlenecks early and effective plan for capacity.

PIM-SSM

Get Source-Specific Multicast for more efficient multicast traffic segmentation and higher scalability.

Having intermittent sources is a common issue when market data applications are used as servers to send data to a multicast group and then go silent Continue reading

Welcoming FRRouting to The Linux Foundation

It’s our pleasure to start the week off announcing the release of FRRouting to the open community. We worked closely with several other partners to make this launch happen and we’ll be integrating it with our products in upcoming releases. It’s a constant priority of ours to ensure we are contributing, maintaining and inspiring contributions to the community, and this release truly provides a solution that will be welcomed from many industries.

The following post was originally published on the Linux Foundation’s blog. They have graciously given us permission to republish, as the post does a fantastic job of describing the release. We’ve added a few sentences at the end to tie it all together. We hope you enjoy.

One of the most exciting parts of being in this industry over the past couple of decades has been witnessing the transformative impact that open source software has had on IT in general and specifically on networking. Contributions to various open source projects have fundamentally helped bring the reliability and economics of web-scale IT to organizations of all sizes. I am happy to report the community has taken yet another step forward with FRRouting.

FRRouting (FRR) is an IP routing protocol suite Continue reading

5 ways you can lower data center TCO

To build an affordably scalable data center network, we believe that disaggregation with Cumulus Linux is the ideal networking solution (for obvious reasons). If you haven’t made the jump to open networking, we recommend you read our total cost of ownership (TCO) report, which covers how our customers saved up to 60% by making the switch. For the rest of you that have already come to the light (we prefer calling it the green), we’ve put together a few tips for optimizing your data center network for increased efficiency and lower data center TCO.

1. Optimize your cables and optics
   The cost of optics varies greatly. If you’re running high-cost optics, we recommend doing your research and seeing if there is a lower-cost option that will suit your needs. As switches become denser, the optics and cables can actually cost more than the switches themselves — especially with proprietary, locked-in options from traditional vendors. Most traditional vendors source their optics from third-party manufacturers and then add a premium. When open optics are sourced directly from ODMs, you can reduce the cost of cables and optics by 50% to 70%.
2. Automate like a boss
   Most organizations are doing some form of Continue reading

The first and only NOS to support LinkedIn’s Open19 project

Today we are excited to announce our support of Open19, a project spearheaded by LinkedIn. Open19 simplifies and standardizes the 19-inch rack form factor and increases interoperability between different vendors’ technology. Built on the principles of openness, Open19 allows many more suppliers to produce servers that will interoperate and will be interchangeable in any rack environment.

We are thrilled to be the first and only network operating system supporting Open19 for two reasons. First, this joint solution offers complete choice throughout the entire stack — increasing interoperability and efficiency. We believe the ease of use of this new technology helps expand the footprint of web-scale networking and makes it even more accessible and relevant.

The second reason is that we are continually dedicated to innovation within the open community, and this is one more way we can support that mission. We believe that disaggregation is not only the future but the present (read more about why we think disaggregation is here to stay). When a company like LinkedIn jumped into the disaggregate ring, we knew we wanted to be a part of it.

What is Open19?

The primary component, Brick Cage, is a passive mechanical cage that fits Continue reading

It’s official: Disaggregation is here to stay

When Cumulus Networks was first created, disaggregation was completely disruptive. Organizations of all shapes and sizes were running proprietary hardware and software through every single ounce of their data centers. We went into this industry excited to start something new and make networking faster, smarter, scalable and all-around better. We’re thrilled to report that a lot has changed since then.

This week, Arista announced that their operating system, Arista cEOS™, will support virtual machines, containers and third-party merchant silicon-based switches (ya know, like Cumulus Networks has been doing for quite some time now). This seems like a huge jump for Arista, who has been part of the proprietary school of thought from day one, but we’re honestly not surprised. This is an indicator of just how transformative open networking has been for the industry. It’s taking hold, sinking its teeth into tradition and tearing it apart (both literally and figuratively).

Here are a few other recent signifiers that disaggregation is here to stay:

• Gartner’s recent data showing 30% growth in white-box switching shipments, driven by the flexibility and significant cost reductions network operators are achieving through software operating systems
• Gartner reporting that by the year 2020, it is expected that over Continue reading

What is web-scale networking?

If you’ve heard the buzz in the networking world lately, or if you’ve been paying attention to the back-to-back launches by Cumulus Networks as of late, then you’ve probably heard the term, “web-scale networking.” But what does that actually mean?

The term web-scale networking is inspired by data center giants like Facebook and Google. The industry looked at data centers like theirs and asked, “what are they doing that we can mimic at a smaller scale?” By analyzing these organizations and the benefits they receive from their tactics, the term “web-scale” was born. Essentially, web-scale refers to the hyperscale website companies that have built private, efficient and scalable cloud environments.

Web-scale networking: a definition

Web-scale networking is simply a modern architectural approach to infrastructure. The differentiating components are taken from the key requirements that large data center operators use to build smart networks. Businesses can design cost-effective, agile networks for the modern era by adhering to these three constructs:

• Open and modular
• Intelligence in software
• Scalable and efficient

These three constructs essentially comprise web-scale networking.

While compute has advanced through leaps and bounds with the convergence to private, public and hybrid clouds, networking has notoriously lagged behind. An Continue reading

Join us this year at OCP Summit

It’s that time of the year again! And no, we’re not talking about the arrival of the Spring Equinox (although we’re pretty excited about that too). It’s time for OCP Summit — one of our favorite events of the year. Why you ask? We are committed to the open compute project and we love sharing that passion with others in the industry. This year our summit schedule is chock-full of presentations, booth demos, networking and a multitude of discussions covering how organizations can go web-scale with Cumulus Networks.

What we’re doing at OCP Summit

First off, if you are attending Open Compute Project Summit this year, please stop by our booth for an up close and personal look at Backpack running Cumulus Linux. If you stop by, you’ll also be lucky enough to watch our cofounder and CTO, JR Rivers, demo the product and answer all of your burning questions.

This year we decided to treat attendees to everyone’s favorite fluffy snack — yup, we’ll have our very own cotton candy machine, so stop by during that post-lunch slump for a quick sugar hit. When you come by the booth, you’ll have a chance to enter our giveaway for a Continue reading

Facebook’s chassis, Disaggregate & a webinar you don’t want to miss

Several weeks ago, we let out some big news about Backpack, Facebook’s chassis, running Cumulus Linux. If you missed the news, check it out here.

As part of our launch, we attended Facebook’s exclusive event, Disaggregate, to talk about all things open networking. Our CTO and cofounder, JR Rivers, gave a stellar presentation covering a short history of open networking (“I watched the Googles of the world grow up”), how ONIE was born and why Cumulus Linux was created to help an industry evolve, scale and build better networks. You can watch the full presentation here.

We also manned our station at the event, answering questions about our integration with Backpack and even demoing Cumulus Linux on the product. Some of our takeaways from the event included:

• There was a nice mix of customers. From hyper-scale to SaaS, traditional organizations to state and local governments — all types of organizations were represented. Some were there to learn about the benefits of open networking while others were looking for ways to scale their footprint.
• Most discussions with customers were about their ability to build and/or use their custom applications that traditional lock-in vendors don’t support, which gave them freedom and choice. Continue reading

Announcing Backpack running Cumulus Linux — completing our networking portfolio with a modular platform

We are thrilled to announce our integration with Backpack — the industry’s first commercially supported open chassis with Cumulus Linux. You can now have a consistent operating model across fixed and modular platforms.

With Backpack and Cumulus Linux, you can simplify hyperscaling your network infrastructure, especially as you migrate from 40G to 100G platforms.

When Facebook first approached us about the technology, we were thrilled to be a part of it. We’ve always believed the chassis is an important part of the ecosystem, but we also knew the technology needed to be improved.

In fact, when Cumulus Networks was first founded, we were working on developing a chassis that would work seamlessly with open networking ecosystems. No really, we did! Don’t believe us? Here’s the proof:

Clearly, we never quite got it right. But luckily for us and open networking enthusiasts everywhere, Facebook did. Read more about Facebook and Cumulus Networks.

What is Backpack?

This is Facebook’s second generation modular switch platform based on web-scale principles. Cumulus Networks collaborated with Facebook to provide ONIE support for Backpack. Backpack is an 8RU chassis with 128x 100G ports built as a distributed model where each line card and fabric card have dedicated CPUs Continue reading

Introducing Cumulus Express — open networking hardware & software all in one

In the last few months at Cumulus Networks, we’ve put a lot of focus on finding innovative ways to make web-scale networking accessible to data centers of all sizes and engineers of all backgrounds. We released features like NCLU, EVPN and PIM to make that happen.

In our minds, web-scale networking principles make data centers more powerful and make engineers’ lives easier. We take great pride in helping organizations accelerate their journey to web-scale in the fastest, simplest way possible. That’s why we are super excited to announce that web-scale networking with Cumulus Networks just got EVEN BETTER. We know, you didn’t think it was possible.

Allow us to formally introduce Cumulus Express — your turnkey solution featuring an open networking switch preloaded and licensed with Cumulus Linux. Each Cumulus Express switch is ready to go as is, improving your time to market by eliminating steps to install and research optics. That’s right, you can now deploy switches running Cumulus Linux in one easy step.

With Cumulus Express you get:

• 1G to 100G platforms: Available in 1G-T, 10G/10G-T, 25G (coming soon), 40G & 100G speeds
• NOS & license preloaded: Each switch comes preloaded with Cumulus Linux with an active license Continue reading