Azure VM accelerated networking

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This Azure article will explain all about Azure VM accelerated networking, what it is, how to check it in Azure VM, and how to enable it, etc.

Azure VM accelerated networking

Accelerated networking is a new feature introduced to boost the network bandwidth of a virtual machine in Azure.

It helps to reduce utilization of the CPU, provides more capacity for processing the massive amounts of data, etc

It helps to push more data at once by providing more bandwidth to the network.

All virtual machines of any size do not support this feature. It is a specific virtual machine with a specific size.

How to check accelerated networking in Azure VM

Follow the below steps to check if accelerated networking is enabled for your virtual machine.

Step- 1: 

Login to https://portal.azure.com/

Step- 2: 

Search for Virtual machines there.

accelerated networking azure vm

Step- 3: 

You will see the list of VMs created in your Azure subscription. It will show the VM name, Type, Status, ResourceGroup, Location, etc.

What is Azure vm accelerated networking

Step- 4: 

Now click on the VM name. “MyNewVM” in my case. You can see the details of your virtual machine like Public IP address, status, Computer name, Operating system, Size, etc.

azure vm enable accelerated networking

Step- 5:

Now click on the Networking option under Settings.

Azure vm accelerated networking

Step- 6:

In the blow window, you can see “Accelerated networking” is Disabled for me.

how to enable Azure vm accelerated networking

How to enable accelerated networking in Azure VM [Azure Portal]

You can enable accelerated networking while creating the virtual machine initially.

Check the below steps to enable this option.

There are two cases you can see here while enabling the accelerated networking option

Login to the portal and go to Create a virtual machine option. you can refer to my last blog, How to Create Azure VM (Virtual Machine)

Case -1:

Fill out the details in the Basic tab, then click the Networking tab.

how to enable accelerated networking azure on existing vm

As you will see above, we can’t enable the accelerated networking option for this particular VM. The selected VM size does not support this option.

You can notice here that the On option is disabled. You can’t enable this option in this case.

Case-2:

In this case, the accelerated networking option supports this virtual machine size.

Fill out the details in the Basic tab and select the VM size as “Standard DS3 v2”.

accelerated networking in azure vm

Now, you click on the “Networking” tab. You can enable the accelerated networking option here for this virtual machine

Select the “On” option for the accelerated networking field to enable it.

How to disable accelerated networking option for your virtual machine

How to enable Accelerated Networking on existing VMs using Azure PowerShell.

You can enable the accelerated networking option on the existing virtual machine, but the prerequisites are The virtual machine must be a supported size for accelerated networking.

Follow the below steps

Step- 1:

We must first stop or deallocate the VM for which you want to enable the accelerated networking option.

Stop-AzVM -ResourceGroup "newresgroup" -Name "MyNewVM"

Step- 2:

You can enable the accelerated networking option on the NIC of your VM

$mynic = Get-AzNetworkInterface -ResourceGroupName "newresgroup" -Name "mynewvm843NIC"

$mynic.EnableAcceleratedNetworking = $true

$mynic | Set-AzNetworkInterface

Step- 3:

Now, you can restart your virtual machine using the below command. Now, if you go and check for the networking tab, the accelerated networking option must be enabled.

Start-AzVM -ResourceGroup "newresgroup"  -Name "MyNewVM"

Check out Azure virtual machine auto shutdown

Wrapping Up

In this Azure article, we discussed Azure VM accelerated networking, what it is, how to check it in Azure VM, how to enable it, etc. Thanks for reading this article !!!