kernel of truth podcast

Building modern campus networks



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In this episode we talk about trends, architectures and technologies for building modern Campus networks. Joining Kernel of Truth podcast hosts Brian O’Sullivan and Roopa Prabhu are two of our senior consultants, Eric Pulvino and David Marshall, who know what they’re talking about because they are in the field working with customers building these networks. They share their first hand knowledge here so be sure to take a listen!

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.

Roopa Prabhu: Roopa Prabhu is Chief Linux Architect at Cumulus Networks. At Cumulus she and her team work on all things kernel networking and Linux system infrastructure areas. Her primary focus areas in the Linux kernel are Linux bridge, Netlink, VxLAN, Lightweight tunnels. She is currently focused on building Linux kernel dataplane for E-VPN. 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. You can find her on Twitter at @__roopa.

Eric Pulvino: Eric is a Senior Consulting Engineer on our Professional Services team. Before he became Cumulus Curious(TM) he worked for Cisco consulting on large service provider networks from various household names. Today he works with customers in all stages of the open networking pipeline from initial product training, on to architecture and design, as well as the deployment and operation phases. He is not sure if he loves Linux or Networking more but is happy to work at Cumulus Networks where he doesn’t have to choose. When not on-the-clock, he is frequently annoying his family, writing all kinds of python-based home automation. You can find him on Twitter at @EricPulvino.

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.

Episode links

Join our community Slack channel here. We’re also on LinkedInTwitterFacebook and Instagram!

To learn about our Campus solution, head to our solutions page here.


kernel of truth podcast

Routing protocols in the datacenter fabric



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Hosts Roopa Prabhu and Pete Lumbis are joined by a special guest to the podcast, Russ White! The group come together virtually to discuss what we should think about when it comes to routing protocols in the datcenter. What are the tradeoffs when using traditional protocols like OSPF or BGP? What about new protocols like RIFT or a hybrid approach with things like BGP-link state? Spoiler alert: it depends.

Guest Bios

Roopa Prabhu: Roopa Prabhu is Chief Linux Architect at Cumulus Networks. At Cumulus she and her team work on all things kernel networking and Linux system infrastructure areas. Her primary focus areas in the Linux kernel are Linux bridge, Netlink, VxLAN, Lightweight tunnels. She is currently focused on building Linux kernel dataplane for E-VPN. 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. You can find her on Twitter at @__roopa.

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

Russ White: Who is Russ White? The short answer— he’s worked around electronics from the early 1970’s through the late 1980’s, moved into computers in the 1980’s, and become seriously into network engineering in the late 1980’s. He’s never looked back and if you’re curious to learn more you can find out all you need to know about him via his website here.

Episode links

Join our community Slack channel here. We’re also on LinkedInTwitterFacebook and Instagram!

Russ’s podcast “the hedge” can be found via his website listed above or you can find it here.

Resource referenced: Distributed flood optimization 


kernel of truth podcast

Production Ready Automation



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In this episode hosts Roopa Prabhu and Brian O’Sullivan chat with Justin Betz about production grade automation and CI/CD workflows for continuous maintenance and deployment of your “infrastructure as code.” They also discuss how like any other software code, code to manage and automate your infrastructure (IAC) has to be maintained, fixed, withstand hardware and software upgrades — so how do you do that? Finally, the group talks about Open Source production quality automation code. Enjoy!

Guest Bios

Roopa Prabhu: Roopa Prabhu is Chief Linux Architect at Cumulus Networks. At Cumulus she and her team work on all things kernel networking and Linux system infrastructure areas. Her primary focus areas in the Linux kernel are Linux bridge, Netlink, VxLAN, Lightweight tunnels. She is currently focused on building Linux kernel dataplane for E-VPN. 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. You can find her on Twitter at @__roopa.

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.

Justin Betz: Justin is a Technical Marketing Engineer at Cumulus Networks. He holds both a CCIE and a CCONP certification and brings over a decade of experience in network operations to help Cumulus change the networking industry. Outside of the office, you’ll find him on the trails, either hiking or mountain biking. Find him on LinkedIn here.

Episode links

Join our community Slack channel here. We’re also on LinkedInTwitterFacebook and Instagram!

Give production-ready network automations a try! It’s as simple as copy, paste, deploy. Cumulus in the Cloud now offers the industry’s first open source and fully packaged automation solution. Sign-up for your free 3-day trial here.


kernel of truth podcast

Linux networking with eBPF



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Click here for our previous episode.

This podcast is all about Linux and to talk about it, we have two of the top Linux kernel experts. Kernel of Truth host Roopa Prabhu is one and chats with our special guest David Ahern about eBPF. If you haven’t heard of eBPF, it’s the hottest Linux kernel technology bringing programmability and acceleration to many Linux subsystems. In this podcast we focus on eBPF’s impact on networking and the million possibilities it brings to the table. 

Guest Bios

Roopa Prabhu: Roopa Prabhu is Chief Linux Architect at Cumulus Networks. At Cumulus she and her team work on all things kernel networking and Linux system infrastructure areas. Her primary focus areas in the Linux kernel are Linux bridge, Netlink, VxLAN, Lightweight tunnels. She is currently focused on building Linux kernel dataplane for E-VPN. 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. You can find her on Twitter at @__roopa.

David Ahern: David is a member of the kernel group within the Systems team at DigitalOcean. His focus right now is networking on hypervisors, and he is working to improve XDP capabilities for cloud hosting environments. Prior to DigitalOcean, he worked on the Linux networking stack for Cumulus Networks, most notably adding support for VRF and improving route scale via nexthop objects.

Episode links

Join our community Slack channel here. We’re also on LinkedInTwitterFacebook and Instagram!

Lwn introduction to eBPF: https://lwn.net/Articles/740157/

XDP Documentation: https://prototype-kernel.readthedocs.io/en/latest/networking/XDP/

Bcc-tools:

Bpfrace: high level tracing language for eBPF: https://github.com/iovisor/bpftrace

Bpftrace in buster: https://packages.debian.org/buster/bpftrace

Learn eBPF tracing: http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2019-01-01/learn-ebpf-tracing.html

Cilium Project:

Using eBPF in Kubernetes: https://kubernetes.io/blog/2017/12/using-ebpf-in-kubernetes/

Project Calico and eBPF: https://www.projectcalico.org/introducing-the-calico-ebpf-dataplane/

Netdev 0x14 Talks:

Cloudflare’s exporter (hooks ebpf to Prometheus): https://github.com/cloudflare/ebpf_exporter

Mellanox ebpf_exporter for dropped flows: https://github.com/Mellanox/mlxsw/wiki/Packet-Drops-Monitoring#ebpf-exporter

libbpf on github: https://github.com/libbpf/libbpf

Brendan Gregg’s web site (contains reference to his latest BPF book and related material): http://brendangregg.com/


kernel of truth podcast

Open Compute Project Summit 2020



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Early March is a busy time here at Cumulus Networks and part of the reason is the Open Compute Project Summit. Kernel of Truth hosts Brian O’Sullivan and Roopa Prabhu are joined by Scott Emery, project lead at OCP. First thing the group covers— what is OCP? The conversation continues into what’s happening in the OCP community, what you can expect at the conference 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.

Roopa Prabhu: Roopa Prabhu is Chief Linux Architect 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. You can find her on Twitter at @__roopa.

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 and is a project lead at OCP.

Episode links

Join our community Slack channel here. We’re also on LinkedInTwitterFacebook and Instagram!

Headed to OCP Summit? You can sign-up for our production-ready automation demo happening at our booth C12 here.


kernel of truth podcast

FRRouting update



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Click here for our previous episode.

Season three jumps right into the deep end of the networking pool with a discussion on FRRouting. Kernel of Truth hosts Brian O’Sullivan and Roopa Prabhu are joined by a new guest to the podcast, Donald Sharp. With FRR being the hottest Open Routing protocol stack today, the group talks about the recent updates and features that are happening at such a high velocity now. What does that mean for the community? Listen to find out. You can also find more about FRRouting at their website here and Twitter 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.

Roopa Prabhu: Roopa Prabhu is Chief Linux Architect 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. You can find her on Twitter at @__roopa.

Donald Sharp: Donald, a Principal Engineer at Cumulus Networks, is a maintainer and on the Technical Steering Committee of the FRRouting project. He has been working at Cumulus Networks over the past 5 years working on a variety of routing protocols with the occasional foray into the Linux Kernel internals. Previously he world at Cisco Systems for 15 years developing EIGRP. You can find Donald on Twitter at @menotyousharp


kernel of truth podcast

Season 3 teaser



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Click here for our previous episode.

In this episode, we tease what’s coming up for Kernel of Truth’s season 3. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast if you haven’t already so you’re notified when the first episode for season 3 is posted or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. For behind-the-scenes look of life at Cumulus Networks, follow us on Instagram too. 

 


kernel of truth podcast

2019 retrospect and 2020 predictions



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Click here for our previous episode.

In this episode, hosts Brian O’Sullivan and Roopa Prabhu are joined by Kernel of Truth podcast guest pros Pete Lumbis and Rama Darbha. The group looks back at 2019, discussing what they learned from the year and then move on to their 2020 predictions. Want a teaser? Automation was a hot topic in 2019 not just on our podcast but with our customers. It’s become less of a “nice to have” and more of a “need to have.” If you’re hungry for more 2019 retrospect and 2020 predictions, be sure to listen to this jam-packed podcast.

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.

Roopa Prabhu: Roopa  is Chief Linux Architect 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. You can find her on Twitter at @__roopa.

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.

Rama Darbha: Rama is the head of the consulting organization at Cumulus Networks, helping customers and partners optimize their open networking strategy. Rama has an active CCONP 2019::19 and CCIE #22804, with a Masters in Engineering and Management from Duke University. You can find him on LinkedIn here.


kernel of truth podcast

Infrastructure as code in action



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Click here for our previous episode.

In this episode we continue the conversation about “infrastructure as code.” Last time we chatted about it we talked to Nick Mitchell and Eric Pulvino, two of our consultants, and shared not only what it is but what the problems infrastructure as code is solving for and why you should care. In this latest episode we go a step further. Kernel of Truth hosts Brian O’Sullivan and Pete Lumbis are joined by Anton Karneliuk who talk more about what it is and also discuss how to evolve it, what the challenges are and Anton shares his real-life experiences implemented it at The Hut Group.

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.

Anton Karneliuk: Anton is a telecommunication industry enthusiast with huge track of the delivered projects across Europe. Started as a traditional network engineer in the Belarussian OpCo velcom | A1 Anton mastered pure networking skills (2x CCIE #49412 RS/SP) and then expanded the area of interest to the disaggregated data centre’s networks and network automation/programmability. Till July 2019 Anton was working as the team lead in Vodafone Group focusing on the design and optimization of the mobile and fixed services in the access/backhaul networks in Europe with the primary focus on the SDN based on Segment Routing, BGP-LS and PCEP, and simplification of the whole Service Provider operation process using automation. Currently, Anton is a network manager in THG (The Hut Group) Hosting with responsibility of building and operating the disaggregated data centres with Mellanox/Cumulus and international backbone spanning THG data centres and automation to manage that stuff. The main mantra: there are no service providers’, enterprises’ or data  centres’ networks. There are just applications, which must be connected in a certain way. You can find him on LinkedIn, Twitter, website and blog

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


kernel of truth podcast

Open networking is not whitebox



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Roopa Prabhu and Roopa’s hype man Pete Lumbis join Kernel of Truth host Brian O’Sullivan to discuss why open networking is not just whitebox, it’s so much more. Between the general advantages of this kind of architecture to the benefits of being backed by the Linux kernel and Linux community— open networking is a great option to have not just now but going forward. Learn how this open development community works together to the advantage of everyone, not just networking, and with companies of all sizes, including hyper-scale ones, improving things like the sanitation of code and so much more. As a special bonus you’ll also learn what to eat in the data center. Spoiler: the answer is nothing but Brian might have an opinion otherwise.

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.

Roopa Prabhu: Roopa Prabhu is Chief Linux Architect 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. You can find her on LinkedIn 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