Cumulus Networks was a

computer software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

company headquartered in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

, US. The company designed and sold a

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

for industry standard

network switch A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, Ethernet switch, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destinat ...

es, along with management software, for large

datacenter A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for business ...

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

, and

enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterpris ...

environments. In May 2020, American semiconductor manufacturer

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

announced it was acquiring Cumulus. Post acquisition the company was absorbed into Nvidia's networking business unit, along with

Mellanox Mellanox Technologies Ltd. () was an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet technology. Mellanox offered adapters, switches, software, cables and silicon for markets including high ...

. Nvidia still offers Cumulus Linux.

Background

Cumulus Networks was founded by JR Rivers and Nolan Leake in 2010. The company raised a first round of seed funding in 2012. Cumulus Networks emerged publicly in June 2013 after previously operating in stealth mode. The company is backed by

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

Battery Ventures Battery Ventures is a global, technology-focused investment firm. Founded in 1983, the firm makes venture-capital and private-equity investments in markets across the globe from offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Israel and Lond ...

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

, Peter Wagner and 4 of the 5 original VMware founders. In 2014

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

began offering the option of the Cumulus Linux network OS on Dell's switches. In 2015,

Hewlett Packard Enterprise The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas. It is a business-focused organization which works in servers, storage, networking, containerization software and ...

(HPE) began offering the option of Cumulus Linux on HPE's switches. In 2016, Mellanox began offering Cumulus Linux on their Spectrum switches. In 2018,

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo ( , zh, c=联想, p=Liánxiǎng), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, conv ...

began offering Cumulus Linux on their ThinkSystem Rackswitch line of switches. On June 20, 2019, the company announced the departure of co-founder JR Rivers, who had been the original CEO and, since March 2016, the CTO. According to the company's website, neither Rivers nor Leake remain on the Board of Directors. In January 2020, Hewlett Packard announced a partnership with Cumulus to include Cumulus' Linux NetQ software on HPE's network storage products. In May 2020, Nvidia Corporation announced plans to acquire Cumulus Networks for an undisclosed amount.

Products

Cumulus Linux

Cumulus Linux was their open Linux-based networking operating system for

bare metal In information technology, bare machine (or bare-metal computer) is a computer which has no operating system. The software executed by a bare machine, commonly called a "bare metal program" or "bare metal application", is designed to interact dir ...

switches. It's been based on the

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

Linux distribution. In a 2017

Gartner Gartner, Inc. is an American research and advisory firm focusing on business and technology topics. Gartner provides its products and services through research reports, conferences, and consulting. Its clients include large corporations, gover ...

report Cumulus Networks was highlighted as a pioneer of

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

networking for developing an open source networking operating system in a market where hardware vendors usually delivered proprietary operating systems pre-installed. According to Gartner, Cumulus Networks had worked around the lack of vendor support for open source networking by deploying bare metal switches with the Cumulus Linux operating system in large corporate networks. 32 percent of the Fortune 50 companies used the Cumulus Linux operating system in their

data centers A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer, computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and computer data storage, storage systems. Since IT opera ...

in 2017.

NetQ

NetQ is network state validation software, used during regular operations and for post-mortem diagnostic analysis.

Host Pack

Host Pack includes software that brings the host to the network through NetQ and

FRRouting Free Range Routing or FRRouting or FRR is a network routing software suite running on Unix-like platforms, particularly Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD. It was created as a fork from Quagga, which itself was a fork of GNU Zebra. FRRo ...

. Host Pack improves network visibility through NetQ’s end-to-end fabric validation, and helps network connectivity through FRRouting’s open source routing protocol. It enables the host to be part of the layer 3 network, while supporting layer 2

overlay network An overlay network is a logical computer network that is protocol layering, layered on top of a physical network. The concept of overlay networking is distinct from the traditional model of OSI model, OSI layered networks, and almost always assum ...

Open source projects

Open Network Install Environment (ONIE)

In 2012 Cumulus initiated the open network install environment (ONIE) project. The

Open Compute Project The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that facilitates the sharing of data center product designs and industry best practices among companies. Founded in 2011, OCP has significantly influenced the design and operation of large-scale co ...

turned ONIE into an initiative to define an open source install environment for bare metal network switches. A network switch with a ONIE install environment gives

the choice of network operating system, disaggregating the networking hardware from the operating system. The Cumulus Linux operating system can be installed on all ONIE compliant switches.

References

{{Nvidia 2010 establishments in California Companies based in Mountain View, California American companies established in 2010 Networking companies of the United States Networking software companies Nvidia 2020 mergers and acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States