SAP on Jumbo frames

[former_member248069]

Hi - We're running SAP Core 4.6D on AIX 5.3 with Oracle 10.2. Recently, I found an SAP note 999524 "Oracle 10.2 Platform Support for Async IO" suggesting to configure jumbo frames for all networks, routers and switches.

Our initial test using the backup network did show a sugnificant improvement using jumbo frames. I wonder if anyone can share what problems and.or downside of using jumbo frames for SAP applications.

Thanks,

Duc Hong

[former_member248069]

We implemented Jumbo frames and the performance between the DB and CI server did increase.

[markus_doehr2]

Are you referring to using a NetApp filer? Or did you mean to configure your "normal" network to use Jumbo Frames? That point (10) was valid for the filer

It's a speed gain - no doubt, you may run into problems if not all your affected active network components can deal with those frames. I've seen switches reboot constantly when under heavy load.

If all routers/switches in your network landscape know how to handle those big frames, I know no reason, why one shouldn't benefit of that.

We use those configurations for our backup network for long time and it works flawlessly.

Markus

[former_member248069]

Thank you for the quick reply.

We have used jumbo frames on our backup network and it performs well. Now SAP recommends use that on the SAP network to improve IO thru-put.

Does anyone use it on your SAP network?

[markus_doehr2]

You mean between client (Windows) and the servers?

That would imply that

- all network cards can deal with those frames

- Windows does know, that it should not fragment them (thus - each windows box will need to be configured too)

- network printer need to know how to deal with them too

I'm not sure if that will give any performance gain whatsoever, because the data transferred between SAPGUI and the application server is already really small in normal cases.

You refer this from an Oracle note, that was talking about network connections between a database server and a filer (using NFS) - the things you mention here don't really relate (at least in my understanding).

Markus

[former_member248069]

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I do not mean SAPGUI.

We have separate servers for DB (oracle), CI (SAP) and SAP application servers. Data travel from the DB to CI and other SAP app servers thru the SAP network. It is this network that I want to use jumbo frame. Our backup network (for data & database backup) is always in jumbo frame to take advantege of the large packet size.

Thanks for the reply.