Puppet, Cumulus, Dell Partner on Network Automation

Puppet Labs has announced a partnership with Cumulus Networks and Dell, providing an integration that will improve network automation for customers.

The new integrations provide customers a full-stack solution for their hardware, operating systems, and configuration management. While server automation is mature, the network remains very manual. These integrations extend automation to the network, providing a more flexible network and eliminating operational inefficiencies that come with a manual processes.

Puppet Labs created a native Puppet agent for Cumulus Linux and a new module that allows customers to use change management processes across servers and switches

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

In an outside-the-box solution, Dell and Cumulus Networks have partnered to offer a reference platform on the S6000-ON switch. It allows customers to use a unified change management process 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 Dell's Open Networking, in a press release. “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.”