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Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

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Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#71

Post by DiabloD3 »

wmf wrote: post #64
btoptical wrote: post #63

These big switch boxes typically end up being about thermal management and this box looks like thermal design was an afterthought. Also I'm not sure the power entry design is really all that smart. Generally speaking if you're in the market for a 640Gb/s switch (or 3.8Tb/s switch), does your data center really not have access to 48V power? The AC/DC conversion wastes power and space. The QSFP's are "spaced for optima…

does your data center really not have access to 48V power? No, they really don't. I've never heard of 48V outside of telco.

Facebook's Open Rack project is based around 48v.

Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#72

Post by virtuallynathan »

detaro wrote: post #59
virtuallynathan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that, but you can get more powerful ones for not much more money.

NICs or FPGA boards with NICs? If the latter, I'm all ears

Netronome, http://www.mellanox.com/related-docs/prod_adapter_cards/PB_P..., there are others for more $$ using the Altera Arria 10, or other Xilinx FPGAs with 2x40G or even 4x100G.

Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#73

Post by ay »

Scarbutt wrote: post #57
ay wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've the exact same needs, and by occasion got hold of cisco SG300-10 switch, which I think fits the description - so I thought to share my experience, in case it is useful. I use it for the home lab, where I have a one-armed router serving multiple VLANs, and I have 3x MacMinis running Linux as a "server farm" (The latter I use because they are quite a good gear power-management wise, scaling from ~18W at idle up to…

Is the IOS CLI firmware official? If it is, do you need a support contract to upgrade?

It's a normal checkbox in the gui "Enable SSH" / "Enable telnet", so I would suppose it is.

But further tinkering revealed it seems to be a quite-close approximation of IOS, but not the same IOS you'd get on the "older brethen" boxes.

It's about 95% the same, with differences in small details - the format of the output, the behavior on "more" prompt, the look of that prompt, the way the certs are stored, etc.

Nonetheless should be close enough to be usable in a geek home environment.

I got the software here, looks like it allows to download w/o logging in: https://software.cisco.com/download/release.html?mdfid=28301...

Since the box I had ran a rather old version, I had to do the intermediate steps as described in http://serverfault.com/questions/622724/error-illegal-softwa...

One caveat I noticed is the ssh seems to not work when connecting from Ubuntu 14.04, works fine from OS X. When I have time, I'll debug it further. (I very rarely do any changes on it, the CLI was more an unexpected bonus I wanted to check out rather than a real need).

Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#74

Post by ay »

korethr wrote: post #61
ay wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've the exact same needs, and by occasion got hold of cisco SG300-10 switch, which I think fits the description - so I thought to share my experience, in case it is useful. I use it for the home lab, where I have a one-armed router serving multiple VLANs, and I have 3x MacMinis running Linux as a "server farm" (The latter I use because they are quite a good gear power-management wise, scaling from ~18W at idle up to…

The specs on this look very nice indeed. I'll be taking a closer look at this. My main hesitation is the proprietary firmware. Now I'm not going to disagree with anyone arguing that Cisco knows what they're doing and is competent at putting together firmware for the hardware they sell. Nor will I disagree with anyone arguing that open source is not a magical talisman ensuring quality. No, my main concerns are a) time…

I've sent the software download link in the other comment - so far the history shows quite regular software updates for this box. But I share your concern and can not say much about this box besides what I can infer from the software publish history.

+1 on the OpenWRT. Building a custom package that allows you to get a $20 specialised networked appliance is a breeze. That platform absolutely rocks.

Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#75

Post by jlgaddis »

e12e wrote: post #55
gh02t wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wanted something in the category you're describing and after shopping around a bit I stumbled across Mikrotik's products. I bought one of their 24 port smart switches and it was exactly what I was looking for. Not a lot more expensive than some of the nicer consumer-targeted gear, but it has way more functionality. http://routerboard.com/CRS125-24G-1S-IN

Looks like a very nice product (along with most of the other products). It's a little disappointing that they seem to do only the very minimum wrt the GPL: http://www.mikrotik.com/downloadterms.html I mean, sure, asking for 45 USD for a CD with the source is technically complying with the GPL -- but it does seem a bit strange in this day and age. Not to mention that for the source code to be useful, one would hope on…

At home, I replaced my Cisco ASA 5505 (which replaced a Cisco 1811) with a RouterMaxx 1106 [0] running OpenBSD (from CompactFlash), though it's certainly not cheap.

[0]: http://www.maxxwave.com/solutions/security/routermaxx-6-port...

Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#76

Post by MichaelGG »

kijiki wrote: post #67
e12e wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a similar note, I just recently became aware of Cumulus[1] Debian based switches (but the good bits are closed source) from among others edge-core[2] (via a presentation by PaaS-provider http://zetta.io ) -- eg: http://whiteboxswitch.com/products/edge-core-as4600-54t [1] http://cumulusnetworks.com/support/faq/ [2] http://www.edge-core.com/

To clarify, the only part that is closed is "switchd", which is a userspace program that watches the kernel data structures (route tables, neighbor tables, bridges, ports, vlans, etc) and programs the hardware to match. It links against proprietary silicon vendor SDKs, and programs registers whose description were given to us under NDA. Without this part, everything works the same, but is of course not hardware accel…

What is the flexibility with "open" switches? To get linerate switching, I'm guessing you're still limited by the hardware? Is the benefit that you can more easily setup routing tables (instead of depending on the switch vendor's capabilities), vlans, etc. just by creating them in userspace then pushing them over to the hardware part?

Or can you actually get fairly low level, like implementing your own algorithms for channel bonding? A while back I wanted to do some L7 inspection, but could only get like 10G per server, and we had 40G coming in. EtherChannel didn't acceptably balance out the traffic. Doing so would have required dealing with one of the network processor vendors and all that mess. Would an open switch platform make this a straightforward exercise?

Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#77

Post by MrZipf »

This looks great. They also have the advantage that James Hamilton mentioned AMZ got from building their own hardware - the get to do a cleansheet s/w design and not have to support all the gazillion options that Cisco does.

The talk was on HN a little while ago, worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIQETrFC_SQ

The scale at FB means they're probably saving hundreds of millions doing this.

Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#78

Post by teh_klev »

wmf wrote: post #64
btoptical wrote: post #63

These big switch boxes typically end up being about thermal management and this box looks like thermal design was an afterthought. Also I'm not sure the power entry design is really all that smart. Generally speaking if you're in the market for a 640Gb/s switch (or 3.8Tb/s switch), does your data center really not have access to 48V power? The AC/DC conversion wastes power and space. The QSFP's are "spaced for optima…

does your data center really not have access to 48V power? No, they really don't. I've never heard of 48V outside of telco.

Yes they do. My old employer TeleCity installed 48v as standard, for their telco customers.

Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#79

Post by sschueller »

rsync wrote: post #3

I very much want to transition to open hardware models for networking gear - for both my own home use and for rsync.net. However, at no single site (especially my home) do I need a 6U chassis full of switch ports. Is there a 1U version of this on the horizon ?

http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm

Re: Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch

#80

Post by tiernano »

kijiki wrote: post #68
rsync wrote: post #3

I very much want to transition to open hardware models for networking gear - for both my own home use and for rsync.net. However, at no single site (especially my home) do I need a 6U chassis full of switch ports. Is there a 1U version of this on the horizon ?

Basically anything on here: http://cumulusnetworks.com/support/linux-hardware-compatibil... Some easy ways to buy are: https://bm-switch.com/ http://whiteboxswitch.com/ http://ipfabrics.net/ http://www.penguincomputing.com/products/network-switches/ - nolan co-founder/CTO Cumulus

Are there any that are, say, 48 port GigE? 10G and 40G are a bit much for home use...
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