MLAG – An Implementation for Everyone!
I typically don’t to get up on a soapbox and preach the awesomeness of Linux networking, but I think I’m going to make an exception for this one topic: MLAG.
Yes, MLAG, that wonderful non-standard Multi-chassis Link Aggregation protocol that enables layer 2 multipathing from the host to gain either additional bandwidth or link resiliency. Every vendor that supports MLAG does so by using their own custom rolled implementation of it, which means Vendor A’s version of MLAG cannot interoperate with Vendor B’s version of MLAG. So I can’t have one switch be an “X” box and another be a “Y” box and expect the two to be part of the same MLAG configuration with a Dell server.
That ends today (arguably I could have said, that ended January 2015 when Cumulus Networks shipped with MLAG support in Cumulus Linux 2.5, but I’ll get to that in a bit). Several weeks ago I was with my colleagues Shrijeet Mukherjee and Tuyen Quoc giving a talk about how “Linux Networking Is Awesome” at the 2016 OCP Summit. During our standing room only talk, we explained how Linux networking has become the de-facto networking stack in the data center (and Continue reading
The problem is vast, but a few options are emerging.


