Cumulus Linux

in our overall experience I'd say implementation was really easy and straight forward

Cumulus Linux made our networks faster, simple and created a room for innovation. Since it is affordable, it has been a game changer for out organization. It allows to automate and scaling very easily. It is a powerful open network operating system

All our Layer-2 problems were solved by moving to Cumulus with BGP. The Cumulus team worked with us to design an architecture for our needs. They also modified the licensing to our needs. We have been running Cumulus Linux in two datacenters now for over 3 years and it is really excellent fast and stable.

We installed two new data-center fabric networks with spine-leaf architecture built with Mellanox 100Gb switches and Cumulus Linux OS Data centers are interconnected with redundant 100Gb interconnections. In both data-centers redundancy is assured using underlay BGP routing protocol that is also used used for transferring specific information for overlay tunnels. Overlay tunnels are implemented with VXLAN tunnels for data plane and EVPN control plane. Network configuration is implemented using Ansible based orchestration. We support dynamic creation of both L2 and L3 tunnels that are used to pass client traffic. L2 tunnels terminate in client VLANs L3 tunnels are terminated in VRFs that allow different clients (tenants) to use overlapping ip address space. Client servers can optionally connect to fabric with BGP. Customer creates tunnels within each data-center or between data-centers simply by defining parameters that determines type and locations and running Ansible play-book. There are two books written by Danesh Dutt that makes initial configuration of BGP and EVPN on Cumulus Linux in data-center much easier to understand. There are several examples including examples that can be simulated that makes initial testing easier, but one still have to do lab some testing to actually get real life working configuration, since simulation and examples do not behave same in all details. For later configurations changes testing simulation is helpful. Linux networking knowledge is helps significantly, still nclu command line with inline help and with concurrent display of changes in cli and Linux format that is implemented on Cumulus Linux makes transition bearable for users that are used to standard cli configuration.

Their online documentation hit some rough spots when they updated their URLs & didn't leave stubs or redirects on the old links (Oops) but otherwise I've been very impressed with Cumulus. Their software is well documented, their sales team responsive, and I've been able to order a switch & receive it days later with their Cumulus Express program. Previously ordering compatible Cumulus switches through other vendors took months. I honestly haven't needed to open a support case yet so I can't speak to the quality of their support teams. The primary appeal of Cumulus for me is the fact it ships with no configuration. I don't need to memorize what to disable or change from factory because this switch only does what I tell it to, unlike other major brands.