This webinar deep dives into practical aspects of deploying agile networks.

1. Agile Network Deployment
Practical Deployment of Open Networking
cumulusnetworks.com
Eric Pulvino Senior Consulting Engineer @ Cumulus Networks
Dinesh Dutt Chief Scientist @ Cumulus Networks

2. Agenda
▪Why Bother With Agility
▪Agile Network Deployment: Methodology
▪Agile Deployment Deep Dive
▪Demo
2

3. Networks & Agility
3
Datacenter Networks Are In
My Way
James Hamilton, AWS

4. Agile: Moving At the Speed Your Business Needs
▪… isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a
million, or flying at the speed of light. … Perfect
speed, my son, is being there.”
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5. Agility Translated Into Practice
▪How do you build predictable networks ?
▪How do you make changes predictably ?
▪How do you recover from errors without
affecting business ?
5

6. Agile Me If You Can
▪Fail without serious consequences
▪Architect networks with fine-grained failure domain
▪Recover quickly
▪Revert to good configuration
▪Troubleshoot offline without keeping production
network down
▪Catch errors without the pressure
6

7. v
Agile Deployment
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Traditional Network Deployment
Physical
Install
Ordering / Delivery
Manually
Configure
Production
Weeks
Traditional Deployment
Days/Weeks
Test & Verify

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Accelerating Network Deployment with Automation
Physical
Install
Ordering / Delivery
Manually
Configure
Production
Weeks
Traditional Deployment
Days/Weeks
Test & Verify
Test & Verify
Automation
Assisted
Deployment
Physica
l
Install
Production
Modern Deployment
Physical
Install
Ordering / Delivery
MinutesWeeks
Unused Time...

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Accelerating Deployment with VX and Automation
Physical
Install
Ordering / Delivery
Manually
Configure
Production
Weeks
Traditional Deployment
Days/Weeks
Test & Verify
Automation
Assisted
Deployment
Physica
l
Install
Production
Agile Deployment
Physical
InstallOrdering / Delivery
Test & VerifySimulate
MinutesWeeks

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Testing Underpins Agility
What prevents us from testing in the network?
● Budget
○ Hardware is expensive
● Network Size
○ Large customers often get cheap/free POC
● Time
○ Wiring of physical gear
○ Building configurations
○ Setup of Test Tools
○ Teams are lean

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Leveraging Simulation: Where does it make sense?
Keeping Costs Down
Testing Control Plane
Failure Scenarios
Network OS Installation
Deployment of Automation
Hardware Scale Limits
Forwarding Performance
Simulation is GREAT for Simulation is not so great for

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Leveraging Simulation: Where does it make sense?
Don’t Test Just Routers/Switches
• Integrate Servers to Test the Whole Stack
• Install your Business Apps
• Evaluate Network/Application Interactions
• Firewall/Loadbalancers
Level of Detail is AWESOME
• Pxeboot your Virtual Servers over your Virtual Network
• Run Routing on the Host On your Servers and Advertise
Your Containers/VMs
Simulate “All the Things”…

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Leveraging Simulation: Where does it make sense?
Automation
Assisted
Deployment
Physical
Install
Production
Physical
Install
Ordering / Delivery
Test &
Verify
Simulate
Initial Setup

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Leveraging Simulation: Where does it make sense?
Automation
Assisted
Deployment
Physica
l
Install
Production
Physical
Install
Ordering / Delivery
Test &
Verify
Simulate
Test &
Verify
Simulate
Automation
Assisted
Deployment
Production
Change Control
See this in action: https://gitlab.com/plumbis/interop-2016
Initial Setup

16. v.091715
v
Agile Deployment in Practice
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17. Visualizing Tool Interaction: Layers of Abstraction
Orchestrators
Hardware Resources (CPU, Memory, Network, Disk)
Operating System
Hypervisor
Hardware
Acceleration
Vagrant
VirtualBox
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Tool Overview: VirtualBox
● Free/Open Source
● Cross Platform
(Windows/Linux/Mac Support)
● Drivable with GUI & CLI
● Ideal for Small Scale Use
● Limited to 36 Interfaces
Tool Type: Hypervisor

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Tool Overview: Vagrant
● Free/Open Source
● Interconnects VMs Programmatically
● Share whole simulations in one text file
● Supports Control of Virtualbox/KVM/VMware Hypervisors
● Uses “Vagrantfiles” written in Ruby
Tool Type: Orchestration
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
config.vm.box = "CumulusCommunity/cumulus-vx"
end

20. v.091715
v
Simulating a Custom Topology
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Representing a Topology
Using a Topology.dot File
● Simple text file written in Graphviz
which is an open standard
● Built by hand or via scripting
graph dc1 {
"leaf01":"swp1" -- "leaf02":"swp2"
}
leaf01 leaf02
swp1
swp2
A Basic Topology.dot File

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Overloading a Topology File
Creating a More Useful Simulation
● Describe Nodes
● OS downloaded from Vagrant site
(on first use, if not locally present)
graph dc1 {
"leaf01" [function="leaf“
os="CumulusCommunity/cumulus-vx“ ]
“server01" [function=“host“
os=“ubuntu/trusty64“ memory=“2048”]
"leaf01":"swp1" -- “server01":“eth1“
}
leaf01
server01
swp1
eth1
Node Info Specify OS

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Topology Converter: Dot -> Vagrantfile
https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/topology_converter
● Avoid learning Ruby to write Vagrantfiles by hand
● Builds Vagrantfiles for Virtualbox and libvirt/KVM
● Allows use of production interface names
Topology
Converter
Topology
File
Vagrantfile

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Using Production Interface Names in Simulation
eth0
Normal Vagrant Topology Converter
leaf01 leaf02
1 2 1 2
4 4
3 3
eth0
eth0
leaf01 leaf02
1 2 1 2
49 49
50 50
eth0
vagrant vagrant
Reuse the EXACT configuration in productionArtificial Port Numbers

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A More Complete Topology File
Creating a More Useful Simulation
● Describe Nodes
● (optionally) Add Link Data
graph dc1 {
"leaf01" [function="leaf“
os="CumulusCommunity/cumulus-vx"
config="./helper_scripts/extra_switch_config.sh"]
“server01" [function=“host“
os=“Ubuntu/trusty64" memory=“2048“
config="./helper_scripts/extra_server_config.sh“]
"leaf01":"swp1" -- “server01":“eth1" [left_mac="A0:00:00:00:00:31"]
}
leaf01
server01
swp1
eth1
Link Data
https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/topology_converter/tree/master/documentation#supported-attributes

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Using Topology Converter: Getting Started
Prerequisites:
● Vagrant v1.8.4 or later installed
● Python installed
● Virtualbox
Download the Software:
$ git clone https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/topology_converter.git

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Using Topology Converter
1). Make a Topology File
Examples Included
https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/topology_converter/blob/master/examples/
2). Run the Converter
3). Start the Simulation
Many more options, see the help listing: $ python topology_converter.py -h
$ python topology_converter.py topology.dot -p libvirt
$ vagrant up

28. v
Using The Reference Topology
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Reference Topology
What does it provide?
https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/cldemo-vagrant#understanding-what-is-provided
● Pre-built Simulation environment
○ Built with Topology Converter
● Realistic Spine/Leaf Architecture
○ Uses Actual Port Names
○ Full-Fledged Feature Support
● Simulates the MGMT Network
○ DHCP via static MAC entries
○ DNS & Apache Installed

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The Cumulus Networks Reference Topology
eth1 eth2
11
eth1 eth2
1 2
eth1 eth2
1 2
eth1 eth2eth1 eth2
1 2 3 4
leaf01 leaf02 leaf03 leaf04
server01 server02 server03 server04
spine01 spine02
edge01
(serverXX)
51
1 2 3 4
52 51 52 51 52 51 52
ZZYY
51 52 51 52
ZZYY
1 2 1 2
exit01
(leafYY)
exit02
(leafZZ)
44 44
31 31
32 32
49 49
50 50
49 49
50 50
49 49
50 50
eth0 eth0 eth0
eth0 eth0
eth0 eth0
eth0eth0eth0eth0eth0
eth0
Internet
1 2
oob-mgmt-server
48 eth0
Internet oob-mgmt-switch
eth1
1
eth0
…

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The Cumulus Networks Reference Topology
Internet
oob-mgmt-server
oob-mgmt-switch
eth1
1
eth0
…
1 2 3 4
spine01
ZZYY
31
32
eth0
Normal Vagrant
1 2 3 4
spine01
ZZYY
31
32
eth0
Reference Topology

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Reference Topology
On GitHub  https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/cldemo-vagrant

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The Cumulus Networks Reference Topology
eth1 eth2eth1 eth2
1 2
leaf01 leaf02
server01 server02
spine01 spine02
51
1 2
52 51 52
1 2 1 2
31 31
32 32
49 49
50 50
eth0
eth0 eth0
eth0eth0
eth0
Internet
oob-mgmt-server
oob-mgmt-switch
eth1
1
eth0
…

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Today’s Demo
1). Deploy the Reference Topology
2). Login to the Management Server
3). Fetch your Configurations and Automation
4). Deploy to Virtual Infrastructure

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Today’s Demo
1). Deploy the Reference Topology
2). Login to the Management Server
3). Fetch your Configurations and Automation
4). Deploy to Virtual Infrastructure
$ vagrant up oob-mgmt-server oob-mgmt-switch
$ vagrant up spine01 spine02 leaf01 leaf02 server01 server02
$ vagrant ssh oob-mgmt-server
$ git clone https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/ansible_snippets.git
$ cd ./ansible_snippets/basic_ansible/
$ ansible-playbook ./all.yaml

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Today’s Demo
We’re going to highlight the components that are universal
• Hostname
• MOTD
• License
• Banner Message
• NTP
• Syslog
• Prescriptive Topology Manager (PTM)
• BGP Unnumbered

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Reference Topology
• Routing on the Host
• Ansible Automation
• Puppet Automation
• Chef Automation
• ONIE & Zero Touch Provisioning
• OpenStack
• Multi Chassis LAG (MLAG)
• AND MORE
• Contributions Welcome
Extensive Framework of 10+ Demos and Config Examples
https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/cldemo-vagrant#available-demos

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DEMO TIME!

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Getting More Information
Cumulus VX
https://cumulusnetworks.com/cumulus-vx/
Recreate Our Workflow Today
https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/ansible_snippets/tree/master/basic_ansible
Reference Topology – https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/cldemo-vagrant
Topology Converter – https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/topology_converter
Watch This Again – https://cumulusnetworks.com/webinars/#past-webinars
CI/CD Workflow Example – https://gitlab.com/plumbis/interop-2016

40. Summary
▪Agile Network Deployment is now possible with
open networking
▪Cumulus VX fits seamlessly with powerful tools
such as Vagrant to allow operators to build
entire networks on a server
▪Using simulation allows for building robust,
predictable networks
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41. Next Webinar
▪Network Troubleshooting with Cumulus Linux
▪When: Oct 27, 2016, 10 am PDT
▪Guest: TBD
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Try Open Networking with Cumulus VX
https://cumulusnetworks.com/cumulus-vx/

42. CUMULUS, the Cumulus Logo, CUMULUS NETWORKS, and the Rocket Turtle Logo (the “Marks”) are trademarks and service marks of Cumulus Networks, Inc. in the U.S. and other
countries. You are not permitted to use the Marks without the prior written consent of Cumulus Networks. The registered trademark Linux® is used pursuant to a sublicense from LMI,
the exclusive licensee of Linus Torvalds, owner of the mark on a world-wide basis. All other marks are used under fair use or license from their respective owners.
▪Thank You!
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Bringing the Linux Revolution to Networking