jumbo frames esxi concerns

[alphabanks]

Guys I am playing around with ESXI and jumbo frames in my home lab this is mainly for learning purposes. I am running an HP 1800-8G switch which supports up to a 9216 packet size the nics I'm using both on the storage server and ESXI are Intel Pro 1000 PT they support 4088 and 9014 packet sizes. Now here is where I think it get's interesting ESXI max size is 9000. I always thought when doing jumbo frames everything had to use the same frame size. Because in my setup my nic on the storage server would be at 9014 and ESXI would be at 9000 anyway let me know what you all think.

 

[dandragonrage]

When you set a frame size, you are setting the MAXIMUM frame size. If you set one machine higher than the others, it might take slightly longer to negotiate what they support, but generally it's not an issue. Otherwise if you enabled jumbo frames only machines with the same setting would be able to communicate together.

 

[Wrench00]

On the most part its not an issue. I know NFS stores can get seriously fuxored with it.

 

[KILL____]

I use alteon and e1000, and I haven't seen one issue, except that my drives tend to kill the transfer speed.

 

[mattjw916]

as long as the switch MTU is bigger than the host's MTU I don't think there would any negative impact from a practical perspective... it would be fun to play with in the lab though and see