Jumbo Frame Useage in Enterprise

[typhoon43]

Looking at boosting our NAS/SAN appliance's performance. Have a 48 Port Cisco Gig Blade in a 6509. I know how to turn Jumbo frames on at the CatOS level, but (stupid question), do I need to do something on the NIC side to force jumbo frames, or do most of the new Gig NIC's auto-negotiate that parameter? Just wondering if I need to do any server side setting changes.

Thanks gang.

 

[Darthkim]

Typhoon43,

You need to enable the jumbo frames on the NIC side. By default its set to 1518 bytes.

Did the same for our NAS/SAN.

 

[typhoon43]

Typhoon43,

You need to enable the jumbo frames on the NIC side. By default its set to 1518 bytes.

Did the same for our NAS/SAN.

Figured as much, but I also started teaming the NICs instead of 1 NIC for server VLAN, one NICfor backup VLAN. Wondering if I should go back to teh dual VLAN config before I do this. You notice any improvements in file transfer?

 

[Darthkim]

Some, particular for the backups (we are in the process of retooling ours with Netbackup 6). Especially if they are on the same blade (6748 +dfc3 card).

On our filer, for our end users, we still leave things on 1518 bytes. (MTU). But we have additional interfaces where all the interfaces are set to (i think) 9518 bytes.

So on your server, your thinking 1 int for server vlan, another for backup vlan? Which one is pulling you luns from?

 

[typhoon43]

The luns are on the second NIC (different VLAN). I was trying to segregate the backup traffic off the main network. Have 20+ servers x 2 NICS on a 48 Port Cisco Gig blade. Was going to enable jumbo frames only on the backup VLAN NICs.