Hey Nolan, I love Cumulus' approach and I bet you guys will go very far!
I thought about adopting Cumulus for a large telco project, but for the moment it doesn't seem a good fit as we do lots of openflow, L3 and custom application development.
We don't do OpenFlow, but L3 and custom apps are our main focus.
That said, often times the subset of things that can be done w/ OpenFlow in actual existing hardware are things we can do natively. Feel free to email me if you want to discuss!
There are 1 gig 48 port switches on Cumulus's HCL, they're around $2500 and $700/yr for Cumulus support. Unlike Cisco or Juniper, you must maintain support in order to continue using the product (legally). I can't imagine getting enough utility from a switch for this to make sense for home use.
It is substantially better pricing than list for comparable Juniper / Cisco / etc. equipment. However, Cumulus has no truly low end 1 gig switch (single power supply, limited L3 capability), and you can absolutely negotiate Juniper / Cisco / etc. down to be close to or even below the pricing of the Cumulus solution. That is tougher for 10 gig or 40 gig equipment, which is where the value proposition kicks in for Cumulus.
Maybe Cumulus's approach is enough of a value add for it to make sense to pay a premium, but everyone I talk to is interested in cost savings first and better manageability a distant second. You'll still have to have Juniper / Cisco / etc. in your life to an extent, Cumulus doesn't do routers and they don't have a full range of switch models.
Some easy ways to buy are: https://bm-switch.com/ http://whiteboxswitch.com/ http://ipfabrics.net/ http://www.penguincomputing.com/products/network-switches/
- nolan co-founder/CTO Cumulus