Enabling Jumbo Frames in a Flexpod Environment

Update: I have fixed the 5548 section i was missing the last two lines.

This post will help the user enable Jumbo frames on their Flexpod environment. This document will also work for just about any UCS-based environment, however you will have to check on how to enable Jumbo Frames for their storage array.

This post assumes a few things;

Environment is running 5548 Nexus switches
User needs to setup Jumbo-Frames on the NetApp for NFS/CIFS Shares
Netapp has VIF or MMVIF connections for said NFS/CIFS connections.

Cisco UCS Configuration 

-Login to the UCSM, Click on the LAN Tab.
-Expand LANs, & LAN Cloud.
-Click on the QoS System Class, Change the “Best-Effort” MTU to 9216. 

NOTE: You need to just type in the number, it’s not one of the ones that can be selected in the drop-down.

Expand the Policies section on the LAN Tab.  Right-Click on the QoS Polices and click “Create new QoS Policy”.  Call it “Jumbo-Frames” or something similar.
-On the vNIC Template or actual vNIC on the Service Profile, set the “QoS Policy” to the new Policy.

 ESX/ESXi Configuration

-Either SSH or Console into the ESX host.  If your using ESXi you’ll need to ensure local or remote tech support mode is enabled.
-We need to set the vSwitch that the Jumbo-Framed NICs will be on to allow Jumbo-Frames.
          Type esxcfg-vswitch –l   find the vSwitch we need to modify.
          Type esxcfg-vswitch –m 9000 vSwitch# (Replace # with the actual number)
          Type esxcfg-vswitch –l   you should now see the MTU to 9000

-We now need to set the actual VMKernel NICs.

          Type esxcfg-vmknic –l  find the vmk’s that we need to modify
          Type esxcfg-vmknic –m 9000 <portgroup name> (this is the portgroup that the vmk is part of)
          Type esxcfg-vmknic –l   verify that the MTU is now 9000 

Note: If your using dvSwitches, you can set the MTU size through the VI-Client.

5548 Configuration 

Login to the 5548 switch on the “A” side.
-Type the following;

system jumbomtu 9216
policy-map type network-qos jumbo
class type network-qos class-default
mtu 9216
multi-cast-optimize
exit
system qos
service-policy type network-qos jumbo
exit
copy run start

-Repeat on the “B” Side 

NetApp Configuration 

-Login to the Filer.
-Type ifconfig –a  verify which ports we need to make run jumbo frames.
 -Type ifconfig <VIF_NAME> mtusize 9000 

NOTE: You need to make sure you enable jumbo-frames not only on the VLAN’d VIF but also the “root” VIF.