NVIDIA® Cumulus® VX is a free virtual machine (VM) that enables cloud admins and network engineers to preview and test all the features of Cumulus Linux at their own pace with zero cost.
Get to know Cumulus Linux and open networking principles.
Build sandboxes and prototype network operations before you commit.
Develop and script portable, custom applications—completely risk free.
Cumulus VX is a virtual appliance that helps potential customers and partners get familiar with NVIDIA networking technology, while providing existing customers and partners a platform to prototype network operations and develop custom applications prior to deploying into a production environment. Without the need of a bare-metal switch or specialized hardware, Cumulus VX runs on all popular hypervisors, making traditional networking protocols such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MLAG) and NVIDIA Cumulus-specific technologies such as the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) and Prescriptive Topology Manager (PTM) available for testing and configuration.
Unlike Cumulus Linux, Cumulus VX is not meant to run on production switches or carry production data traffic. It doesn’t have an actual ASIC or network processing unit (NPU) for line-rate performance or hardware acceleration. Cumulus Linux's switch package is omitted from the VX offering. Additionally, Cumulus VX does not come with the usual Cumulus Linux product level of support and QA resources.
Data center cloud admins and network engineers can leverage Cumulus VX. Some use cases for Cumulus VX include (but are not limited to):
Cumulus VX can run in the following environments:
VirtualBox
Standalone
With GNS3
With Vagrant
KVM
Standalone
With GNS3
VMware
With Workstation
With Fusion
With ESXi
There is no upgrade support for Cumulus VX. Images will be released for Cumulus VX for every Cumulus Linux release. You cannot upgrade Cumulus VX using apt-get upgrade|update and will have to install the new version from scratch. However, you can use apt-get to install additional software packages, whether they’ree Cumulus Linux-specific or Debian-specific.
Cumulus VX is not a production-ready virtual switch or virtual router. It’s not intended for use in a production environment.
Dive into 3 examples of VXLAN design: Gateway on an internet edge service, centralized routing and BGP EVPN with Anycast Gateway.
Explore technical documentation for detailed instructions on how to use Cumulus VX, Cumulus Linux, and other NVIDIA networking products.
Learn how to get started quickly with this command line cheatsheet.