Hi Matt,
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 5:41 PM, Davies,Matt MDAVIES@generalatlantic.com wrote:
Hi all,
We are looking to implement jumbo frames on our filers in order to help the throughput of ISCSI. We have a number of Windows boxes using the MS software ISCSI initiator, and we also have a number of VMware ESX 3.5 servers also using the VMware ISCSI initiator.
And hence have a few questions about jumbo frames:
Will this help with ISCSI performance ?
Usually, yes. It will help iSCSI performance if you have I/O which is over 2k in size. Since Windows by default uses a 4k block size, this is usually the case.
What about CIFS clients, will we need to change on those machines ?
If at all possible, see if you van seperate your iSCSI traffic from CIFS traffic by using different interfaces.
Does anybody else have any words of wisdom that would help ?
Jumbo needs to be supported end-to-end, which means that all equipment in the path from the NetApp up to the NIC in your server need to support this. On el-cheapo servers and switches, this is not always the case.
Any yes I know should be using NFS but I don't have a license for it yet L
This may be argued for VMWare, but obviously not for the Windows boxes :)