Enable Jumbo Frames on ESXi 4

With the ever growing need to transfer more data over my network I purchased a new gigabit switch and since Jumbo Frames are a must in gb-networks I thought they would be enabled by default in ESXi.

But thats not the case. You have to enable them for every vSwitch you have, every NIC will then use Jumbo Frames.

• Login over SSH to your ESXi
• $ esxcfg-vswitch -l ... that will list the current MTU
• $ esxcfg-vswitch -m 9000 vSwitch0 ... set the MTU to 9000 (Jumbo Frames)
• $ esxcfg-vswitch -l ... verify the change
• ... repeat for your other vSwitchs ...
• $ esxcfg-nics -l ... verify that every NIC has the new MTU-Value

Thats it.

Reboot to see that the changes are persistent.