Benefit of using jumbo frames

You might want to reduce your CPU processing by using jumbo frames with your network interfaces. Because jumbo frames are larger than standard frames, fewer frames are needed and therefore CPU processing overhead is reduced.

Jumbo frames are packets that are longer than the standard Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) frame size of 1,518 bytes. The frame size definition for jumbo frames is vendor-specific because jumbo frames are not part of the IEEE standard. The most commonly used jumbo frame size is 9,018 bytes.

Jumbo frames can be used for all Gigabit Ethernet interfaces supported on your storage system. The interfaces must be operating at or above 1,000 Mbps.

You can set up jumbo frames on your storage system in the following two ways:

During initial setup, the setup command prompts you to configure jumbo frames if you have an interface that supports jumbo frames on your storage system.
If your system is already running, you can enable jumbo frames by setting the MTU size on an interface.

Network interface requirements
Before you enable jumbo frames on your storage system, clients and intermediate routers on the network must have jumbo frames enabled. In particular, the following network infrastructure requirements (as appropriate) must be satisfied:
Guidelines for configuring clients for jumbo frames
You should follow certain guidelines when configuring clients for jumbo frames:

Parent topic: How Ethernet frame sizes are defined