Cumulus Networks' Linux network OS is now available for Facebook’s latest open hardware platform named "Backpack."
In addition, the Cumulus Linux network OS supports Wedge 100, the fixed configuration switch platform which Facebook made available to the community via the Open Compute Project last year.
“It’s been our mission from day one to bring the agility and economics of web-scale networking to companies of all sizes,” said JR Rivers, co-founder and CTO of Cumulus Networks. “Through our close work with the team at Facebook and our partner Celestica, we’re making it simple for data center operators to take advantage of the first open ecosystem chassis, combined with software proven through production deployments at more than a quarter of the Fortune 50 and some of the world’s largest public clouds.”
Backpack highlights:
- Reliability - Backpack comes with 128x 100G front panel ports, which is equivalent to 12x 1U 100G fixed form factor switches. This reduces sourcing and deployment complexity by eliminating hundreds of cables and optics for the customer.
- Flexibility - This is the first Open Networking modular design switch that customers can commercially buy and load Cumulus Linux onto.
- Operational Efficiency - Eliminating supervisors and proprietary communication protocols from traditional chassis greatly improves control plane performance, high availability and troubleshooting. Further, an orthogonal direct chassis architecture enables better airflow and thermal performance, which reduces cooling and power requirements.
- Scalability - Backpack follows the web-scale principles that allow customers to maintain consistent automated provisioning across all their switches of different form-factors (fixed or chassis).
https://cumulusnetworks.com/blog/announcing-backpack-running-cumulus-linux/
