Optimize network throughput for Azure virtual machines

  • 06/13/2025

Azure virtual machines (VMs) have default network settings that can be further optimized for network throughput. This article describes how to optimize network throughput for Windows and Linux VMs, including major distributions such as Ubuntu and Red Hat.

Windows virtual machines

If your Windows VM supports accelerated networking, enable that feature for optimal throughput. For more information, see Create a Windows VM with accelerated networking.

For all other Windows VMs, using Receive Side Scaling (RSS) can reach higher maximal throughput than a VM without RSS. RSS might be disabled by default in a Windows VM. To check if RSS is enabled and enable it, follow these steps:

  1. See if RSS is enabled for a network adapter with the Get-NetAdapterRss PowerShell command. In the following example, output returned from the Get-NetAdapterRss RSS isn't enabled.

    Name                    : Ethernet
InterfaceDescription    : Microsoft Hyper-V Network Adapter
Enabled                 : False

  2. To enable RSS, enter the following command:

    Get-NetAdapter | % {Enable-NetAdapterRss -Name $_.Name}

    This command doesn't have an output. The command changes network interface card (NIC) settings. It causes temporary connectivity loss for about one minute. A Reconnecting dialog appears during the connectivity loss. Connectivity is typically restored after the third attempt.

  3. Confirm that RSS is enabled in the VM by entering the Get-NetAdapterRss command again. If successful, the following example output is returned:

    Name                    : Ethernet
InterfaceDescription    : Microsoft Hyper-V Network Adapter
Enabled                 : True

Linux virtual machines

RSS is always enabled by default in an Azure Linux VM. Linux kernels released since October 2017 include new network optimizations options that enable a Linux VM to achieve higher network throughput.

Ubuntu for new deployments

The Ubuntu on Azure kernel is heavily optimized for excellent network performance on Azure. Currently, all Ubuntu images by Canonical come by default with the optimized Azure kernel installed.

Use the following command to make sure that you're using the Azure kernel, which has -azure at the end of the version.

uname -r

#sample output on Azure kernel:
6.8.0-1017-azure

Ubuntu on Azure kernel upgrade for existing VMs

You can get significant throughput performance by upgrading to the Azure Linux kernel. To verify whether you have this kernel, check your kernel version. It should be the same or later than the example.

#Azure kernel name ends with "-azure"
uname -r

#sample output on Azure kernel:
#4.13.0-1007-azure

If your VM doesn't have the Azure kernel, the version number usually begins with 4.4. If the VM doesn't have the Azure kernel, run the following commands as root:

#run as root or preface with sudo
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install "linux-azure"
sudo reboot

Other distributions

Most modern distributions should have significant improvements with kernels newer than 4.19+. Check the current kernel version to make sure that you're running a newer kernel.

Optimizing cross-region transfer speeds in Azure Linux VMs

Azure Linux VMs often experience network performance issues, particularly when transferring large files (1 GB to 50 GB) between regions, such as West Europe and West US. These issues are caused by generic kernel configurations, network buffer settings, and default congestion control algorithms, which result in delayed packets, limited throughput, and inefficient resource usage.

To enhance network performance, consider implementing the following optimizations that are proven effective in many situations on Azure:

  • Network buffer settings: Adjust kernel parameters to maximize read and write memory buffers. Add these configurations to /etc/sysctl.d/99-azure-network-buffers.conf:
net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 4096 87380 67108864
net.ipv4.udp_mem = 4096 87380 33554432
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 67108864
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 65536 67108864
net.core.rmem_default = 33554432
net.core.wmem_default = 33554432
net.ipv4.udp_wmem_min = 16384
net.ipv4.udp_rmem_min = 16384
net.core.wmem_max = 134217728
net.core.rmem_max = 134217728
net.core.busy_poll = 50
net.core.busy_read = 50
  • Congestion control for kernels 4.19+: Enabling Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time (BBR) congestion control can often result in better throughput. Add this configuration to /etc/sysctl.d/99-azure-congestion-control.conf:
net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = bbr
  • Extra TCP parameters that will usually help with better consistency, throughput: Add these configurations to /etc/sysctl.d/99-azure-network-extras.conf:
# For deployments where the Linux VM is BEHIND an Azure Load Balancer, timestamps MUST be set to 0
net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 1

# Reuse does require tcp_timestamps to be enabled. If tcp_timestamps are disabled because of load balancers, you should set reuse to 2.
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1

# Allowed local port range. This will increase the number of locally available ports (source ports)
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535

# Maximum number of packets taken from all interfaces in one polling cycle (NAPI poll). In one polling cycle interfaces which are # registered to polling are probed in a round-robin manner.
net.core.netdev_budget = 1000

# For high-performance environments, it's recommended to increase from the default 20KB to 65KB, in some extreme cases, for environments that support 100G+ networking, you can 
# increase it to 1048576
net.core.optmem_max = 65535

# F-RTO is not recommended on wired networks. 
net.ipv4.tcp_frto = 0

# Increase the number of incoming connections / number of connections backlog
net.core.somaxconn = 32768
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 32768
net.core.dev_weight = 64
  • Queue discipline (qdisc): Packet processing in Azure is improved by setting the default qdisc to fq. Add this configuration to /etc/sysctl.d/99-azure-qdisc.conf:
net.core.default_qdisc = fq
  • Optimize NIC ring buffers for TX/RX: Create an udev rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/99-azure-ring-buffer.rules to ensure they're applied to network interfaces:
# Setup Accelerated Interface ring buffers (Mellanox / Mana) 
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="hv_pci", ACTION=="add",  RUN+="/usr/sbin/ethtool -G $env{INTERFACE} rx 1024 tx 1024"

# Setup Synthetic interface ring buffers (hv_netvsc)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="hv_netvsc*", ACTION=="add",  RUN+="/usr/sbin/ethtool -G $env{INTERFACE} rx 1024 tx 1024"
  • Create an udev rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/99-azure-qdisc.rules to ensure the qdisc is applied to network interfaces:
ACTION=="add|change", SUBSYSTEM=="net", KERNEL=="enP*", PROGRAM="/sbin/tc qdisc replace dev \$env{INTERFACE} root noqueue" 
ACTION=="add|change", SUBSYSTEM=="net", KERNEL=="eth*", PROGRAM="/sbin/tc qdisc replace dev \$env{INTERFACE} root fq“
  • Interrupt Request (IRQ) scheduling: Depending on your workload, you may wish to restrict the irqbalance service from scheduling IRQs on certain nodes. Update /etc/default/irqbalance to specify which CPUs shouldn't have IRQs scheduled:
IRQBALANCE_BANNED_CPULIST=0-2
  • UDEV rules: Add rules to optimize queue length and manage device flags efficiently. Create the following rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/99-azure-txqueue-len.rules:
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="eth*", ATTR{tx_queue_len}="10000“

For Packets delayed twice

When it comes to Linux performance networking we use SR-IOV with Mellanox drivers (mlx4 or mlx5), something specific to Azure is that this creates two interfaces a synthetic and a virtual interface. Learn More.

Additional Notes

System administrators can implement these solutions by editing configuration files such as /etc/sysctl.d/, /etc/modules-load.d/, and /etc/udev/rules.d/. Ensure that kernel driver updates and systemd configurations are reviewed for potential regressions.

For more information on specific configurations and troubleshooting, refer to Azure documentation on networking performance.

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