Puppet Labs, Cumulus Networks and Dell Partner to Extend SDN to More Devices in the Data Center

PORTLAND, OR--(Marketwired - Apr 9, 2015) - Puppet Labs, the leading provider of IT automation software, today announced Cumulus Networks as the most recent partner to launch support for its Puppet Supported Program. Puppet Labs and Cumulus Networks have developed a joint integration so switches running Cumulus Linux, the operating system for open networking, can be managed just as easily as any other Puppet-managed device. The Puppet Supported Program is a certification program that enables Puppet Enterprise customers to extend the benefits of automation across their entire data center.

"The Puppet Supported Program enables more businesses to leverage the power of automation so they can move faster, with even more confidence," said Nigel Kersten, CIO of Puppet Labs. "Through our work with Cumulus Networks and Dell, joint customers can now extend the benefits of Puppet Enterprise to more parts of their data centers, making SDN and its benefits a reality."

Building on a previous partnership between Dell and Cumulus Networks, these new integrations provide customers a full stack solution of hardware, operating system and configuration management. While many companies have mature server automation practices and tooling in place, changes to the network are often performed manually, or with vendor-provided tools that are disconnected from other data center operations. As part of this partnership, Cumulus Networks and Puppet Labs have created a native Puppet Enterprise agent for Cumulus Linux and a Cumulus Linux Puppet module.

"Now data center IT teams can automate and manage both the network and the compute infrastructure exactly the same way," said Reza Malekzadeh, VP Business, Cumulus Networks. "Puppet Enterprise native support for the Cumulus Linux OS equates to immediate OpEx savings as adoption of open networking expands to a broadening range of organizations." 

With the Cumulus Linux Puppet modules and native Puppet Enterprise agent, customers can use Puppet Enterprise to configure and manage everything from compute resources to switch VLANs and interfaces. For those wanting to get started out of the box, Dell and Cumulus Networks have partnered to offer a reference platform on the S6000-ON switch. This allows customers to use a unified change management processes across their servers and switches, enabling faster application deployment.

"As more organizations deploy OpenStack, we expect to see open networking solutions as a major part of those implementations," said Adnan Bhutta, director of global strategy for Open Networking, Dell. "Dell customers can now build a complete, highly-automated and cost-effective solution with Dell Open Networking switches and Cumulus Linux OS, with Puppet Enterprise for automation across both servers and networking."

"We've been automating our servers, load balancers and many key pieces of our infrastructure with Puppet," said Richard Kiene, Principal Engineer at Faithlife. "We can now use the same model to automate our switches. This wasn't possible before, since other vendors only allowed basic configuration through Puppet. In contrast, with Cumulus Linux, you can provision the switch with a high level of customization. We've set Puppet up such that we can just iterate through templates."

The Puppet Supported Program demonstrates a joint commitment to equipping customers with the tools to manage their infrastructure at the highest levels of reliability and performance. Puppet Labs and its partners have committed to creating joint solutions that enable automation of both platforms and devices with Puppet Enterprise. The Puppet Supported Program's rigorous certification process delivers customers the benefits of fully tested and supported automation of all leading hardware in today's data centers.

Interested in learning more?

• See how Puppet Labs and Cumulus Networks are working together.
• Listen to the podcast "Automating Cumulus Network Gear with Puppet."
• Read an install guide on getting started.

To get started, joint customers can download the Puppet agent and Cumulus Linux modules from the Puppet Forge.

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about Puppet Labs.
• Subscribe to the Puppet Labs blog.
• Follow Puppet Labs on Twitter @puppetlabs.
• Try Puppet Enterprise for free.

About Puppet Labs
Puppet Labs, Inc. is the leader in IT automation. Puppet Labs software provides system administrators the operational agility, efficiency and insight they need to proactively manage dynamic infrastructure, scaling from tens of servers to thousands, both on-premise and in the cloud. Thousands of the world's leading organizations use Puppet Labs software to configure and manage their IT infrastructure, including Bank of America, Cisco, NYSE, Salesforce.com and WebEx. Based in Portland, Oregon, Puppet Labs employs more than 350 people. The company is backed by investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, VMware, Cisco, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and Emerson Street Partners. To learn more, please visit PuppetLabs.com.

About Cumulus Networks
Unleash the power of open networking with Cumulus Networks. Founded by veteran networking engineers from Cisco and VMware, Cumulus Networks makes the first Linux operating system for networking hardware and fills a critical gap in realizing the true promise of the software-defined data center. Just as Linux completely transformed the economics and innovation on the server side of the data center, Cumulus Linux is doing the same for the network. It is radically reducing the costs and complexities of operating modern data center networks for service providers and businesses of all sizes. Cumulus Networks has received venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Peter Wagner and four of the original VMware founders.