Enabling Jumbo Frames on the Solaris guest operating system

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information on enabling Jumbo Frames on the Solaris guest operating system.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

Resolution

To utilise Jumbo Frames on Solaris, you must meet these prerequisites:

• Solaris 10 U4 (32bit or 64bit) or later
• VMXNET 3 virtual network adapter
• ESXi 5.0
• VMware Tools installed and running in the virtual machine
• Jumbo Frames configured on all interconnecting network points from the virtual machine to its desired target

To use Jumbo Frames on Solaris:

Note: The first virtual NIC is usually identified as /dev/vmxnet3s0. If your identifier differs, substitute it appropriately in these commands.

1. Enable Jumbo Frames using this command:
   
   # ndd -set /dev/vmxnet3s0 accept-jumbo 1
   
   
2. Set the MTU on the adapter to 9000 using this command:
   
   # ifconfig vmxnet3s0 mtu 9000
   

You can test the settings by pinging to and from the machine with 9000 byte packets.

To test from a remote client, run this command:

# ping -s 9000 IP_of_Solaris_machine

To test from the Solaris machine, run this command:

# ping -s IP_of_another_machine 9000 4

Additional Information

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Installing VMware Tools from ESXi 5.0 on a Solaris virtual machine changes MTU to 9000