Cumulus alternatives

[devin_mm]

I am fairly new to whitebox networking, I purchased a Celestica D4040 and was surprised to see that it has Cumulus 3.3 installed. The problem is the unit is fairly extensively configured and I tried to do a 'net del all' but it wouldn't complete giving me a dhcpd error, I have looked into doing an OS reinstall but it doesn't look like there is a fresh image saved on the unit (probably because the switch used to be managed by Puppet). Specifically the issue I am running into now is after doing a port configuration I get the error "Failed to restart switchd".

Finding a Cumulus image that I can use the license already on my switch doesn't seem too feasible and the configuration on the switch seems broken.

My question is what are my options? Are there any good Cumulus alternatives?

 

[Rand__]

You could try to connect with cumulus and see whether they can provide a clean image given that you have a license.
If you want sth else make sure to save the license data


You could see if SoNIC is compatible, or ONL

 

[nephri]

ONL seems to support only Redstone-XP and Seastone switches (from celestica)

but your switch use BCM56854 (like Redstone-XP compatibility list), so you can give it a try

 

[chilipepperz]

I'd do SONiC on anything if I could. You hear a lot of smack from Big Switch and Cumulus about SONiC. Here's the thing, people actually use SONiC

 

[Rand__]

the only bad thing about it is that there are still a lot of nice features that are still missing (partially only on some hardware - splitting ion broadcom for example, or rdma improvements...)
And for me as a non enterprise user it would be very convenient if they had a webinterface api/cli is great but sometimes ...

 

[nephri]

Here : Azure/SONiC
They only seems to support the DX010 from Celestica.

Since they support the Trident2 Asic from the same binary (broadcom), it may be a chance to do it working !!

I never played with whitebox switches but it may be fun

 

[Rand__]

You know i got a spare DX10 (if you won the lottery recently)?

 

[nephri]

I will do as i didn't see this fellow message

I already spent very too much in my garage game i did a pause in 2018 but i should be reasonnable in 2019 even if i didn't spent my money last year ^^.
If i sell before my Gnodal GS4008, it would be discutable but for now, i will protect me to buy such monsters

 

[Rand__]

lol

 

[devin_mm]

You could try to connect with cumulus and see whether they can provide a clean image given that you have a license.
If you want sth else make sure to save the license data


You could see if SoNIC is compatible, or ONL

I got the response back from Cumulus I thought I would so I backed up the license and am now wiping the switch to try out Sonic. Their compatibility list doesn't include the D4040 but their images are not switch model based only chipset based and the Trident 2 is compatible so we'll see.

 

[nephri]

yes the main asic is supported (that is the minimum) but the hell can be from other parts & drivers. but you can have chance

 

[devin_mm]

Well as a follow up Sonic installed but doesn't work I get the "port_dict is None!" error which seems like a compatibility error and when I try to install ONL it won't even install because they don't have an cel_smallstone_xp module. I guess it looks like unless I can find a Cumulus installer I am SOL.

 

[fohdeesha]

a kind member sent me one of these switches to investigate, my goal is to have either arista's EOS or sonic running on them in 4 months or less

 

[Labs]

@devin_mm: Did you make a image with ddrescue of the mSATA SSD before reinstalling NOS ? Maybe your installation can be fixed. I am sure there is a way to make it standalone.

 

[devin_mm]

a kind member sent me one of these switches to investigate, my goal is to have either arista's EOS or sonic running on them in 4 months or less

I just want to tell you good luck we're all counting on you.

@devin_mm: Did you make a image with ddrescue of the mSATA SSD before reinstalling NOS ? Maybe your installation can be fixed. I am sure there is a way to make it standalone.

No I messed up and didn't think of that I just grabbed the license key and let it go.