15.11.19 - Lesezeit: 2 Minuten

Occasionally I spend some time in discussions with customers and co-workers about the need to use Jumbo frames or not.

In my opinion, you don't need Jumbo frames in a 10G+ world.
And here is why:

Facts

• Jumbo frames have lower overhead since fewer packets are transmitted for a given workload
• You need to configure every device in the transport stream for Jumbos
• There could be some performance plus
• Many storage vendors have Jumbos as best practice

What I see in daily business

• With modern NICs and and Switches you can transfer way enough packets to saturate a 10G+ link with standard packet size
  • If you need more performance --> consider an upgrade to higher bandwidth
• Setting Jumbos on all Interfaces (sometimes: vm / vmkernel, vSwitch, Switch, Trunk, VLAN, Port, Storage) can be difficult for an Sysadmin
  • and it tolerates no issues or glitches... --> Consider automation if needed
• The performance plus is marginal compared to complexity (around 5% plus in performance)
  • also consider an upgrade, if more performance is needed
• Often Jumbos are best practice as no vendor wants have 5% lower performance while POCs
  • but in real life you will see no difference between 9000 and 1500 at all

Conclusion

If you have a Greenfield installation you can consider using Jumbos.
But in a Brownfield (which is about 90%+) stay on 1500.