The only "safe" way to configure traditional (not per-priority) pause frames is to configure the switch to ignore pause frames coming from hosts, and to configure hosts to obey pause frames coming from switches. With data center bridging and per-priority pause, some of that goes out the window.
In the early days of 10GbE, I did drivers for a NIC that had a very small rx fifo. In some cases we had to advise customers to enable pause frames, otherwise the NIC would be subject to tail drops when the switch burst traffic to us. I still feel kind of bad about giving out that advise.
In the early days of 10GbE, I did drivers for a NIC that had a very small rx fifo. In some cases we had to advise customers to enable pause frames, otherwise the NIC would be subject to tail drops when the switch burst traffic to us. I still feel kind of bad about giving out that advise.