Open Networking: Worth the Learning Curve

When’s the last time you had the opportunity to learn about a new area of technology? Not just the latest API but something big. With the emergence of open networking, now may be the time to do just that.

Open networking is becoming more wide spread in data centers, partly because of CapEx savings and customer choice from disaggregation of hardware and software. From an operational standpoint, the efficiencies of automating and managing switches like servers may be even more compelling. Those efficiencies – and resulting OpEx savings – are from using a real Linux OS for the network.

As a Linux operating system running network switches, Cumulus Linux presents a learning opportunity for two specific groups of users: network administrators who are new to Linux, and Linux administrators who are new to networking. Open networking represents a radical improvement in network management, but as with most major changes, there’s a learning curve.

Learning a new language (but still saying the same things).

Leaving IOS, NX-OS, or JunOS for Cumulus Linux means rediscovering how to perform tasks that network administrators have been doing the same way for years. This often means tweaking existing knowledge to understand where familiar commands Continue reading