Kernel of Truth

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You asked for it, we listened, and now we’re delivering! This episode, host Brian calls on Pete Lumbis and special guest David Illes from Mellanox to answer a question we got on our community Slack channel: “What are middle-tier customers doing for storage of Cumulus enabled solutions?” David and Pete share not only what’s changing for middle-tier customers but also tackle the topic of storage solutions in general. What sort of things are we seeing as customers migrate to Ethernet storage? Listen and find out.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

David Iles: David is Senior Director of Ethernet Switching at Mellanox Technologies. Over the last 20 years, David has held leadership roles at 3COM, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, and IBM where he pioneered advanced network technologies including High Speed Ethernet, Layer 4-7 switching, Virtual Machine-aware networking, and Software Defined Networking.  David’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to join two startups to build exceptional technical marketing teams at Alteon Web Systems and BLADE Network Technologies.  As a life-long technologist, David has several patents in the area of data center networking.

David’s current focus is on enabling the sales of Mellanox Ethernet Switches into the evolving landscape of data center networking, HCI and SDS infrastructure, Open Networking, and cloud computing. Looking for more from David? Read his latest blogs here. 

Pete Lumbis: CCIE R&S #28677 and CCDE 2012::3, Pete is a Technical Marketing Engineer at Cumulus Networks. He helps customers build and design next generation, fully automated data centers. He can be found on Twitter at @PeteCCDE

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This episode, host Brian is joined by two of our in-house Linux Kernel experts David and Roopa. Joining them is Attilla who, like many of you, is curious about what’s coming down the line in regards to the Linux Kernel. Since they’re working ahead of everyone, what can we look forward to in the future? We promise you won’t need a crystal ball to find out, just listen here!

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

David Ahern is a Member of Technical Staff at Cumulus Networks. He traded a career in aerospace for Linux in 2000 and has been an advocate for open source and Linux since then. David is currently working on the kernel networking stack and associated userspace tools.

Roopa Prabhu is Director of Engineering, Linux software at Cumulus Networks. At Cumulus she and her team work on all things kernel networking and Linux system infrastructure areas. She loves working at Cumulus and with the Linux kernel networking and debian communities. Her past experience includes Linux clusters, ethernet drivers and Linux KVM virtualization platforms. She has a BS and MS in Computer Science.

Attilla de Groot: Attilla has spent the last 15 years at the cutting edge of networking, having spent time with KPN, Amsterdam Internet Exchange, and HP, with exposure to technology from Cisco, HP, Juniper, and Huawei. He now works for Cumulus Networks, the creators of open networking, where he is able to continue his interest in open architecture design and automation. You can find him on Twitter at @packet_ninja.

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Guess who’s back? Back again? The real Kernel of Truth podcast is back with season 2 and we’re starting off this season with all things EVPN! This topic is near and dear to Attilla de Groots’ heart having talked about it in his recent blog here. He now joins Atul Patel and our host Brian O’Sullivan to talk more about EVPN on host for multi-tenancy. 

Join as we as discuss the problem that we’re solving for, how to deploy EVPN on the host, what the caveats are when deploying and more.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

Attilla de Groot: Attilla has spent the last 15 years at the cutting edge of networking, having spent time with KPN, Amsterdam Internet Exchange, and HP, with exposure to technology from Cisco, HP, Juniper, and Huawei. He now works for Cumulus Networks, the creators of open networking, where he is able to continue his interest in open architecture design and automation. You can find him on Twitter at @packet_ninja.

Atul Patel: Atul has vast experience in various networking technologies working at networking vendors including Cisco, Procket, Motorola and 3Com. He now works at Cumulus Networks where he enjoys working with Linux open networking, frr, virtualization and orchestration technologies.

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As we enter the year, many, if not most, organizations have already been engaging in 2019 planning and strategizing. With that in mind, we thought what better way to wrap up our first season of Kernel of Truth than with an episode dedicated to trends and predictions straight from the brains of some of Cumulus’ brightest — CTO and Co-founder, JR Rivers, TME manager Pete Lumbis, and consultant David Marshall.

Join as we as discuss EVPN, virtualization, keeping up with the demands of digital transformation and more. This will be our last episode of the season, with our next season kicking off later this month.

Guest Bios

JR Rivers: JR is a co-founder and CTO of Cumulus Networks where he works on company, technology, and product direction. JR’s early involvement in home-grown networking at Google and as the VP of System Architecture for Cisco’s Unified Computing System both helped fine tune his perspective on networking for the modern datacenter. Follow him on Twitter at @JRCumulus

Pete Lumbis: Pete is a Technical Marketing Engineer at Cumulus Networks. He helps customers build and design next generation, fully automated datacenters. He can be found on Twitter at @PeteCCDE

David Marshall: David is a Senior Consulting Engineer at Cumulus Networks. He consults with customers on how to scale out complex designs and automation schemes for large scale in-house data center deployments.

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For this week’s Kernel of Truth podcast we dive into Layer 3 networking and why we believe it’s the future of network design. In this episode we cover everything about why you should transition to Layer 3, how to make that transition, and why L3 is different than Layer 2. We bring in Jason Heller, a Principle Consulting Architect here at Cumulus, as well as Donald Sharp, a Principle Engineer to gain insight into the future of Layer 3 and the possibilities it can hold for you.

Tune in to to hear the pros and cons of L3 and the best way to begin transitioning and the options that come with Layer 3 networking. If you like what you hear on this week’s episode make sure to follow and subscribe!

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian O’Sullivan is a generalist who happened to end up in a highly specialized field through no fault of his own. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. He currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux, working closely with internal and external teams to build a product to deliver a delightful experience to customers. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

Jason Heller: Jason Heller is a Principal Consulting Architect at Cumulus Networks, helping customers design and build open networking solutions.  He first began in the IT industry by providing support and *nix system administration at various South East service providers.  Later, he switched gears and moved into networking at Cisco working in the Customer Proof of Concept lab on data center and service provider testing.  Jason is now working in open networking at Cumulus with a focus on open architectures and automation.

Donald Sharp: Donald is a Principle Engineer at Cumulus Networks who helps lead theFRRouting project.  In his off time he likes to have fun with his kids and play guitar in his spare time.

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On this week’s Kernel of Truth episode, we’re breaking down network agility and why it’s important to you. The networking world loves a good acronym, but have no fear, this episode will also begin to unscramble the alphabet soup that comes with the technology. For this episode we brought in Attilla de Groot and Scott Edwards to discuss why agile networks are changing the tech world, how we got here, and what’s next.

If you’re interested in learning about the virtualization of IT, new innovations, and how that’s helping computing power become greater and faster than ever, this episode is for you. We discuss how Cumulus is making design methods and network architecture that’s easier for our customers to use and how we’re working to design a simpler, more freeing approach to networking and much more. So grab your headphones and sit back for 25 minutes of networking goodness!

Guest Bios

Attilla de Groot: Cumulus Networks; Attilla has spent the last 15 years at the cutting edge of networking, having spent time with KPN, Amsterdam Internet Exchange, and HP, with exposure to technology from Cisco, HP, Juniper, and Huawei. He now works for Cumulus Networks, the creators of open networking, where he is able to continue his interest in open architecture design and automation

Scott Edwards: Scott is the Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Cumulus Networks, helping drive new product launches, training, messaging of the Cumulus portfolio.  Scott has worked in various product marketing roles at CA Technologies, Juniper Networks, and HPE ranging from DevOps, Continuous Delivery, Hybrid Cloud, Mobile, APM and SDN to high-end data storage and converged infrastructure solutions.  Scott received his MBA from Brigham Young University.  Besides focusing on transforming networking with open, Linux-based solutions, Scott enjoys acting as a jungle gym for his 5 young kids. He can be found on Twitter at @Scott_D_Edwards.

Episode 08 Links

Cumulus Twitter: @cumulusnetworks

Slack: slack.cumulusnetworks.com

Kernel of Truth forum: https://forums.cumulusnetworks.com/kernel-of-truth-podcast-232118

Website: cumulusnetworks.com

Subscribe to Kernel of Truth on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Castbox and Stitcher!

Click here for our previous episode.

Cumulus Networks’ home base is in the heart of Mountain View, California — the Mecca of tech startups. But we’ve got Cumulus folks all around the world! We wanted to give this podcast a bit of international flair, so we invited some overseas guests into the recording booth. I’m joined by Attilla de Groot (Sales Engineer for EMEA) and Sutharsan Sivapalan (Sales Engineer for APAC), who filled me in on the networking customers, trends and challenges that are cropping up in their respective regions. There are definitely differences between these two ends of the world, but you’d be surprised how much these regions have in common despite the distance.

Tweet any questions, feedback or topics you want us to discuss at @cumulusnetworks and use the hashtag #KernelOfTruth — let us know if you like what you’re hearing!

Guest bios

Sutharsan Sivapalan, CCIE #40322 (Data Center), is a Senior Systems Engineer covering the US West and Asia-Pacific regions for Cumulus Networks. Prior to joining Cumulus, Sutharsan spent 6 years at Cisco designing and troubleshooting some of the most complex networks in the world, as a member of their Technical Services organisation. In that role, he supported the entire Data Centre portfolio, including UCS, the Nexus line of switches, virtualisation platforms and also storage systems. Sutharsan has made the journey from closed, proprietary systems to Open Networking and is keen to share the benefits of the open approach.

Attilla Groot has spent the last 15 years at the cutting edge of networking, having spent time with KPN, Amsterdam Internet Exchange, and HP, with exposure to technology from Cisco, HP, Juniper, and Huawei. He now works for Cumulus Networks, the creators of open networking, where he is able to continue his interest in open architecture design and automation.

Episode 06 links

Cumulus Twitter: @cumulusnetworks

Slack

Kernel of Truth forum

Website: cumulusnetworks.com

EVPN book

Subscribe to Kernel of Truth on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Castbox and Stitcher!

Click here for our previous episode.

Let’s talk about lasers! In this episode of Kernel of Truth, I bribed asked Product Manager Brian O’Sullivan (who you’ll remember from our episode about automation) and Principal Engineer Scott Emery to join me in the recording booth and chat about optical networking. We’ll get into topics like forward error correction, the divide between data center networking engineers and optical networking engineers, Voyager and Pink Floyd. Who knew that progressive rock had anything to do with optical networking?? (It doesn’t, really, but we somehow worked it in.)

So tune in and learn why an open packet optical platform is so innovative for optical networking and telco! And make sure to subscribe to the Kernel of Truth podcast so you stay up to date on the open networking revolution — get with the future of networking so you’re not just “Another Brick in the Wall!”

Tweet any questions, feedback or topics you want us to discuss at @cumulusnetworks and use the hashtag #KernelOfTruth — let us know if you like what you’re hearing!

Guest bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

Scott Emery: Scott has been working in the networking industry since the Reagan administration. First at 3Com and then at Grand Junction Networks, where he worked on Fast Ethernet Standards, NICs, and switches. Scott served time at Cisco from when Grand Junction was acquired until 2013 as an architect for software, hardware, and ASICs for the Catalyst 2K and 3K product lines. He now develops software for Cumulus Networks as a Principal Engineer.

Episode 06 links

Cumulus Twitter: @cumulusnetworks

Slack: slack.cumulusnetworks.com

Kernel of Truth forum: https://forums.cumulusnetworks.com/kernel-of-truth-podcast-232118

Website: cumulusnetworks.com

What is Voyager?: https://cumulusnetworks.com/learn/how-to-videos/voyager-wha/

Subscribe to Kernel of Truth on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Castbox and Stitcher!

Click here for our previous episode.

If you enjoyed our previous episode about hyper-converged infrastructure, then you’re in for a real treat — the infamous Greg Ferro of Packet Pushers is back for a special BONUS episode of Kernel of Truth! We learned that once you get Greg and JR talking, it’s nearly impossible to get them to stop. So, we let them keep going and recorded an extra episode all about Voyager. Greg’s got questions about our open packet optical platform, and JR’s got answers. You’ll be impressed with how much awesome info and discussion they can fit into a mini episode!

Like what you’re hearing and want to talk about it with fellow Kernel of Truth fans? Good news! We’ve got a new Cumulus community forum for the podcast where you can chat with other podcast and networking aficionados. Be sure to check it out!

As always, you can tweet any questions, feedback or topics you want us to discuss at @cumulusnetworks and use the hashtag #KernelOfTruth — we want to hear from you, and give you content that you want to hear!

Guest bios

Greg Ferro: Greg is a household name in the tech industry as a co-founder of Packet Pushers. He survived 25+ years of Enterprise IT as a network engineer, architect and designer. Hear him on the Weekly Show, Priority Queue, and Network Break. You can follow him on Twitter at @etherealmind

JR Rivers: JR is a co-founder and CTO of Cumulus Networks where he works on company, technology, and product direction. JR’s early involvement in home-grown networking at Google and as the VP of System Architecture for Cisco’s Unified Computing System both helped fine tune his perspective on networking for the modern datacenter. Follow him on Twitter at @JRCumulus

Episode 5.5 links

Packet Pushers Twitter: @packetpushers

Cumulus Twitter: @cumulusnetworks

Slack: slack.cumulusnetworks.com

Kernel of Truth forum: https://forums.cumulusnetworks.com/kernel-of-truth-podcast-232118

Website: cumulusnetworks.com

More about Voyager: https://cumulusnetworks.com/products/voyager/

Subscribe to Kernel of Truth on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Castbox and Stitcher!

Click here for our previous episode.

If you’ve been waiting for a tech-heavy deep dive, then you’re in luck. In this episode we’re getting REAL nerdy — so we decided to bring out the big guns and invite two of the industry’s biggest networking geeks to discuss hyper-converged infrastructure. Naturally, we got our fearless co-founder and CTO JR Rivers into the recording booth so he could share his wisdom (and crack a few jokes, as usual).

And who did we invite to go toe-to-toe with JR on networking knowledge? None other than the one and only Greg Ferro, co-founder of Packet Pushers! We couldn’t be more excited that Greg agreed to join us in the recording booth and share his industry insights.

So, what data center networking topic did we decide was meaty enough for these guys to chew on? Because Greg and JR are all about looking toward the future and analyzing what they see coming up on the horizon, this episode is dedicated to hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). How is HCI changing the way we look at network architecture? We’ll discuss these topics (and why it’s dangerous to wear skinny leather ties in a data center) in depth and make some predictions about what’s to come in the near future.

Tweet any questions, feedback or topics you want us to discuss at @cumulusnetworks and use the hashtag #KernelOfTruth.

Guest bios

Greg Ferro: Greg is a household name in the tech industry as a co-founder of Packet Pushers. He survived 25+ years of Enterprise IT as a network engineer, architect and designer. Hear him on the Weekly Show, Priority Queue, and Network Break. You can follow him on Twitter at @etherealmind

JR Rivers: JR is a co-founder and CTO of Cumulus Networks where he works on company, technology, and product direction. JR’s early involvement in home-grown networking at Google and as the VP of System Architecture for Cisco’s Unified Computing System both helped fine tune his perspective on networking for the modern datacenter. Follow him on Twitter at @JRCumulus

Episode 05 links

Packet Pushers Twitter: @packetpushers

Cumulus Twitter: @cumulusnetworks

Slack: slack.cumulusnetworks.com

Website: cumulusnetworks.com

HCI solutions: https://cumulusnetworks.com/networking-solutions/converged-infrastructure