Cumulus Networks Releases NetQ 3.0 with Life Cycle Management

Cumulus Networks on Tuesday released NetQ 3.0, a network operations tool that now includes full life cycle management capabilities.

With the latest enhancements, Cumulus NetQ 3.0 gives data centers and campus environments new features such as configuration management and software upgrade management. Cumulus NetQ utilizes telemetry for deep troubleshooting, visibility and automated workflows from a single user interface.

Cumulus Networks’ Patrho Mishra

“We are in the business of providing our customers with the tools to make network operation and deployment as easy and cost-effective as possible,” said Partho Mishra, president and chief product officer at Cumulus Networks. “Adding life cycle management capabilities to NetQ provides significant operational benefits to our Cumulus Linux customers and opens the doors to unprecedented insights into the state of modern network infrastructure at the push of a button.”

NetQ, the telemetry-based fabric validation system, first hit the market three years ago. The vendor rolled out NetQ 2.0 about two years later. At that time, Cumulus added a new GUI for visibility into Cumulus Linux.

Cumulus says NetQ 3.0 full life cycle management functionality allows users to easily upgrade, configure and deploy network elements with a full suite of operations capabilities. Those capabilities include visibility, troubleshooting, validation, trace and comparative look-back functionality.

Here’s more info on the new NetQ 3.0 features:

• Configuration Management — Customers can now install a new switch and push a golden configuration from a centralized location. So users get the ability to enforce standards and deploy tools that help to automate repetitive configuration tasks. It also helps to easily identify differences between this and the default configuration.

• Software Upgrade Management — This feature helps avoid network disruption. For example, disruption during important software upgrades for new features, critical security patches and bug fixes. NetQ Upgrade Management aims to simplify software upgrade functionality.

“What previously would require automation scripting and significant development effort to perform a software upgrade, can now be done simply with the push of a button,” Scott Ciccone, senior director of product marketing at Cumulus Networks wrote in a blog.

In January, Cumulus and HPE partnered to put Cumulus’ open network operating system on HPE’s StoreFabric M-series Ethernet switches. The M-series switches also run Cumulus Linus and NetQ.