Windows VMs with the Azure Network Adapter

  • Article

Learn how to use the Azure Network Adapter (MANA) to improve the performance and availability of Windows virtual machines (VMs) in Azure.

For Linux support, see Linux VMs with the Azure Network Adapter.

For more info about MANA, see Azure Network Adapter overview.

Important

MANA is currently in preview. For legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, in preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability, see the Supplemental Terms of Use for Azure Previews.

Supported Azure Marketplace images

The following Windows images from Azure Marketplace have built-in support for the Ethernet driver in MANA:

  • Windows Server 2016
  • Windows Server 2019
  • Windows Server 2022

Check the status of MANA support

Because the MANA feature set requires both host hardware and VM software components, you must perform the following checks to ensure that MANA is working properly on your VM.

Azure portal check

Ensure that Accelerated Networking is enabled on at least one of your NICs:

  1. On the Azure portal page for the VM, select Networking from the left menu.
  2. On the Networking settings page, for Network Interface, select your NIC.
  3. On the NIC Overview pane, under Essentials, note whether Accelerated Networking is set to Enabled or Disabled.

Hardware check

When you enable Accelerated Networking, you can identify the underlying MANA NIC as a PCI device in the virtual machine.

Note

When you configure multiple NICs on MANA-supported hardware, there's still only one PCI Express (PCIe) Virtual Function (VF) assigned to the VM. MANA is designed such that all VM NICs interact with the same PCIe VF. Because network resource limits are set at the level of the VM type, this configuration has no effect on performance.

Driver check

To verify that your VM has a MANA Ethernet driver installed, you can use PowerShell or Device Manager.

PowerShell

PS C:\Users\testVM> Get-NetAdapter

Name                      InterfaceDescription                    ifIndex Status       MacAddress             LinkSpeed
----                      --------------------                    ------- ------       ----------             ---------
Ethernet                  Microsoft Hyper-V Network Adapter            13 Up           00-0D-3A-AA-00-AA       200 Gbps
Ethernet 3                Azure Network Adapter #2            8 Up           00-0D-3A-AA-00-AA       200 Gbps

Device Manager

  1. Open Device Manager.

  2. Expand Network adapters, and then select Azure Network Adapter. The properties for the adapter show that the device is working properly.

    Screenshot of Windows Device Manager that shows an MANA network card successfully detected.

Install drivers

If your VM has both portal and hardware support for MANA but doesn't have drivers installed, you can download the Windows drivers.

Installation is similar to the installation of other Windows device drivers. The download includes a readme file that has detailed instructions.

Verify that traffic is flowing through MANA

In PowerShell, run the following command:

PS C:\ > Get-NetAdapter | Where-Object InterfaceDescription -Like "*Azure Network Adapter*" | Get-NetAdapterStatistics

Name                             ReceivedBytes ReceivedUnicastPackets       SentBytes SentUnicastPackets
----                             ------------- ----------------------       --------- ------------------
Ethernet 5                       1230513627217            22739256679 ...724576506362       381331993845

Next steps