Even though the switch may support it, some switches still have problems with Jumbo Packets and can choke on the heavy traffic. I don't believe that the filer has an issue with MTU of 9000, but as Matt pointed out, I'd check the info on your linux distro as well.
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From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Matthew Zito Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:32 AM To: Brent Ellis; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: Jumbo Packets with netapp FAS3050
We've always put our MTU size at 9000, because we're primarily database-oriented. However, I have no idea if Linux can support the larger jumbo frames. 9000 definitely works though, and lets 8k database or filesystem blocks fit within one frame, so there's no fragmentation.
Thanks, Matt
-- Matthew Zito Chief Scientist GridApp Systems P: 646-452-4090 mzito@gridapp.com http://www.gridapp.com
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com on behalf of Brent Ellis Sent: Tue 2/26/2008 9:28 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Jumbo Packets with netapp FAS3050
Hello All,
We have been using our netapp primarily for NAS storage, but I am experimenting with iSCSI now for some specific applications. I managed to create a bit of a network issue recently when I tried enabling jumbo packets on my netapp and my test server. The iSCSI connection kept resyncing and was not stable. I think this was because I didn't create a separate vlan for the devices using jumbo packets. Upon further research, I found mention that some devices/ oses calculate the checksums differently and that can affect the max packet size. Does anyone have any recommendations for a packet size for both the netapp and for my linux servers? is 10240 a safe bet(max size supported by my switch) or should I use something like 9000 or 8192? Should I use a different packet size if I am connecting a target to a windows box? I would ideally like to make a jumbo packets vlan and just set all the devices on that vlan to a larger MTU, but I don't want to create a network traffic problem in the process.
Brent Ellis Systems Analyst/Consultant CAS Computing Services Group Boston University interi@bu.edu