5 ms·
It's a nice day to consider a Linux-based whitebox switch.
by itomato 8y ago
It's a nice day to consider a Linux-based whitebox switch.
- dogecoinbase 8y agoThat way when a vulnerability is found in your control plane, there's no one to issue a bulletin, so no problem!
- SEJeff 8y agoFun fact, Arista switches are very lightly modified minimal Fedora installs with some fancy hardware. The entire userspace (literally all of it) is written in well done python and the magic is all in their asics. I got to RE their entire firmware as part of R&D at one of my previous employers.
- xvf22 8y agoDon't they run on commodity Broadcom ASICs?
- cgh 8y agoYes but then again, so do some Cisco switches nowadays. Arista's management team is former Cisco as well. There is a tangled legal history between the two companies, with Cisco claiming various patent infringements. So far as I know, none of the claims are hardware-related.
- xvf22 8y agoPrevious poster claimed that all of the magic was hardware but I've always been told that it was in the software. HPE now seems to have some agreement with Arista.
- mcpherrinm 8y agoModern network ASICs are highly-programmable devices. So you can implement a lot of magic on the same hardware as competitors. It's really not one way or the other, but the software and hardware working together that's important. [disclaimer: I am a former Arista employee. I did some of the "light" Fedora modifications.]
- SEJeff 8y agoDid I get it wrong? One thing we found interesting is that we could run unmodified software directly on the switches so long as we built it for the AMD Athlons running on them.
- anon49124 8y agoBarracuda firewalls are similar: mostly vanilla Linux with a little magic.
- intorio 8y agoThat 'little' magic being specialized hardware packet processors that are programmed from proprietary programs running in Linux.
- intorio 8y agoArista uses commodity ASICs which are programmed from specialized binary blobs running in a linux based userspace. This is the same thing linux whitebox switches do.
- SEJeff 8y agoSorry I should have better specified. The magic is in the asics that are programmed with their own proprietary magic, but most of the userspace is written in python, and it is relatively well written python.
- nwlieb 8y agoThe majority of the userspace is not in python, but binaries. None of the magic is in the asics (which are commodity Broadcom).
- SEJeff 8y agoSorry the majority of the troubleshooting and management bits are all in python. You can even get a bash shell on an Arista if you want. Quite nice hardware.
- isostatic 8y agoAriana impressed me with their automated testing. Prices are very reasonable too.
- e-m-p 8y agoEveryone has automated testing. What Arista doesn’t have is 20+ years of features (bloat).
- isostatic 8y agoI'd like to think they do, but Cisco and Juniper sales guys have been rather cagey on the scale of their testing.
- tatersolid 8y agoAs a customer of both Cisco and juniper for many years, I can surmise based on experience of their software quality that Cisco has terrible automated testing, and Juniper has less terrible but still terrible automated testing. Both vendors have a lot of legacy code, so this is somewhat expected. Arista started with modern kernels and used modern development practices from the start.
- itomato 8y agoPrecisely my point. Cumulus, Canonical, Fedora - take your pick.