• Introduction
• Bare Metal Switching
• Cumulus Linux

The OpenCompute Project (OCP) ¹

• 2009 : Facebook growing exponentially.
  • Facebook starts a two years project to re-design its data centers.
  • Everything is re-thought from scratch
    • From hardware chips to server software stacks.
    • Goal : reduce costs and energy consumption.
• 2011 : Facebook shares the design and architecture to the public.
  • The open compute project is opened to other industrial actors.
• 2013 : Projet starts to re-design data-center networking.²

Growth in Cloud Networking at Facebook

OpenCompute Networking ³

• Fully disaggregated and open networking HW & SW
• Operating System - Linux based operating systems & developpers tools
• Fully automated configuration management
• Software Defined Networking (SDN)

OpenCompute Networking Interesting Outcomes

• 2013 : Cumulus Linux.
• 2014 : Facebook publishes the Wedge network switch architecture ⁴
• 2019 : HP, Intel, Apple, Cisco, Juniper, Nokia, Lenovo, Microsoft, Broadcom, IBM and Google are now members of the Open Compute Project.

Main Idea : An Open Network Devices Eco-system

versus

Proprietary network devices vs Open Network devices

• Proprietary Network devices
  • Slow pace of innovation
  • Lack of control
  • Expensive
• Open network devices
  • Rapid Innovation : HW and SW are no longer tighly coupled
  • Control and Choice : HW and SW can be chosen independently
  • Less Costly : Share the same software for multiple HW vendors

From Open servers to Open Networks

Source : Cumulus Linux

Uses Cases

• LinkedIn Latency Issue ⁵
• Spotify SDN Internet Router ⁶
• ScpiPass OpenFlow 100 Gbs DMZ Firewall and IDS ⁷

Reference model

What is it ?

• An operating system for network devices based on Gnu/Linux.

Main features

• Cumulus Linux is Linux based on a Debian distribution
  • You can run your usual server applications.
  • You can develop your own scripts.
  • You can manage it the same way as a server.
  • You can install Linux Applications.
• Cumulus Linux runs on industrial L3 switches.
  • Thanks to partnership with HW vendors.
• Major differentiator with software only switches : Network HW acceleration.
• Line rate switching with Linux in the Control plane.

Layered Architecture

Source : Cumulus Linux

Linux Style Operation

• If you know how to manage a Linux server with the terminal, operating a Cumulus network device is very familiar.
• Bash for interactive session and scripting.
• Vi/Nano to edit debian network specific configurations files
  • You can still use Nclu for a classical network style interactive CLI.
• See Lab 2 for an hand-on experience.