Cumulus RMP

Introducing Cumulus RMP

Cumulus RMP is a network operating system in a ready-to-deploy solution that enables out-of-band management for web-scale networks. It provides an open platform for customers and system integrators to use as is or on which to build rack management applications.

Cumulus RMP shares the same architecture, foundation, and user experience with Cumulus Linux. However, the feature set is customized to the needs of out-of-band management. For a comparison of the features supported in Cumulus RMP, see below.

What’s New in Cumulus RMP

Cumulus RMP 3.7.0 contains several bug fixes and the following new features:

What’s New in Cumulus RMP 3.6.2

Cumulus RMP 3.6.2 contains several bug fixes and the following new feature:

What’s New in Cumulus RMP 3.6.0

Cumulus RMP 3.6.0 contains several bug fixes and the following new feature:

  • Support for a combination of local-as and allowas-in commands

Cumulus RMP Features

Cumulus RMP shares much of the same functionality as Cumulus Linux and comes preinstalled on your choice of 1G switches. For more information about each feature, follow the links below to the Cumulus Linux user guide:

Layer 2 SupportCumulus RMPCumulus Linux
LLDP
PTM
Ethernet bridging
Bonds/link aggregation
MLAG
LACP
LACP bypass
Spanning tree protocol/RST
802.1Q VLAN tagging
VLAN-aware bridging
BPDU guard
Bridge assurance
BPDU filter
VRR
IGMP and MLD snooping
Unicast/broadcast storm control
CDP

 

Layer 3 SupportCumulus RMPCumulus Linux
Static routing
ECMP
ECMP resilient hashing
OSPF
BGP
FRRouting
BFD
IPv6
Management VRF
Virtual routing and forwarding (VRF)

 

Additional FunctionalityCumulus RMPCumulus Linux
Network command line utility
Interface configuration & management
802.1X interfaces
Zero-touch OS install & upgrade
Installation and package management
Full Linux extensibility
Network virtualization (VXLAN, EVPN, etc.)
Monitoring & troubleshooting
AAA
ACLs / Netfilter
QoS

Setting up a Cumulus RMP Switch

The quick start guide walks you through the steps necessary for getting your Cumulus RMP switch up and running after you remove it from the box.

Considerations

Dynamic MAC Address Learning Delays

On Cumulus RMP switches, during an STP topology change or an interface flap, the following symptoms could be observed:

  • A dynamic MAC address learned on the switch can take a long time to get populated back into the kernel, even though the MAC address has already been updated in hardware.
  • The update of MAC learning can take a much longer time than expected, causing the MAC address to point to the wrong interface in hardware and not show up in the kernel, which leads to traffic disruption.

These symptoms have only been observed on Cumulus RMP switches; Cumulus RMP is meant to be used for out-of-band management purposes. Other platforms do not exhibit this issue.