Cumulus Networks was a

computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

company headquartered in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

, USA. The company designed and sold a Linux operating system for industry standard network switches, along with management software, for large

datacenter A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

, 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 CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

announced it was acquiring Cumulus. Post acquisition the company was absorbed into Nvidia's networking business unit, along with Mellanox. 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 Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen H ...

Battery Ventures Battery Ventures is an American 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 Lon ...

, Sequoia Capital, Peter Wagner and 4 of the 5 original

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

founders. In 2014 Dell 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, United States. HPE was founded on November 1, 2015, in Palo Alto, California, as part of the splitting of the ...

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

Mellanox Mellanox Technologies Ltd. ( he, מלאנוקס טכנולוגיות בע"מ) was an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet technology. Mellanox offered adapters, switches, softwa ...

began offering Cumulus Linux on their Spectrum switches. In 2018, Lenovo 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. On May 4, Nvidia Corporation announced plans to acquire Cumulus Networks for an undisclosed amount.

Products

Cumulus Linux

Cumulus Linux was their open

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

based networking operating system for

bare metal In computer science, bare machine (or bare metal) refers to a computer executing instructions directly on logic hardware without an intervening operating system. Modern operating systems evolved through various stages, from elementary to the p ...

switches. It's been based on the Debian Linux distribution. In a 2017

Gartner Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its client ...

report Cumulus Networks was highlighted as a pioneer of open source 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 (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommun ...

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. 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 networks.

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 shares designs of data center products and best practices among companies, including ARM, Meta, IBM, Wiwynn, Intel, Nokia, Google, Microsoft, Seagate Technology, Dell, Rackspace, Hewlett ...

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