Create an Azure virtual machine with Accelerated Networking

January 14, 2019 admin Networking 0







  • 01/10/2019


  • 9 minutes to read


  • Contributors




In this article






In this tutorial, you learn how to create a Linux virtual machine (VM) with Accelerated Networking. To create a Windows VM with Accelerated Networking, see Create a Windows VM with Accelerated Networking. Accelerated networking enables single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to a VM, greatly improving its networking performance. This high-performance path bypasses the host from the datapath, reducing latency, jitter, and CPU utilization, for use with the most demanding network workloads on supported VM types. The following picture shows communication between two VMs with and without accelerated networking:

Comparison

Without accelerated networking, all networking traffic in and out of the VM must traverse the host and the virtual switch. The virtual switch provides all policy enforcement, such as network security groups, access control lists, isolation, and other network virtualized services to network traffic. To learn more about virtual switches, read the Hyper-V network virtualization and virtual switch article.

With accelerated networking, network traffic arrives at the virtual machine’s network interface (NIC), and is then forwarded to the VM. All network policies that the virtual switch applies are now offloaded and applied in hardware. Applying policy in hardware enables the NIC to forward network traffic directly to the VM, bypassing the host and the virtual switch, while maintaining all the policy it applied in the host.

The benefits of accelerated networking only apply to the VM that it is enabled on. For the best results, it is ideal to enable this feature on at least two VMs connected to the same Azure virtual network (VNet). When communicating across VNets or connecting on-premises, this feature has minimal impact to overall latency.

Benefits

  • Lower Latency / Higher packets per second (pps): Removing the virtual switch from the datapath removes the time packets spend in the host for policy processing and increases the number of packets that can be processed inside the VM.
  • Reduced jitter: Virtual switch processing depends on the amount of policy that needs to be applied and the workload of the CPU that is doing the processing. Offloading the policy enforcement to the hardware removes that variability by delivering packets directly to the VM, removing the host to VM communication and all software interrupts and context switches.
  • Decreased CPU utilization: Bypassing the virtual switch in the host leads to less CPU utilization for processing network traffic.

Supported operating systems

The following distributions are supported out of the box from the Azure Gallery:

  • Ubuntu 16.04
  • SLES 12 SP3
  • RHEL 7.4
  • CentOS 7.4
  • CoreOS Linux
  • Debian “Stretch” with backports kernel
  • Oracle Linux 7.4

Limitations and Constraints

Supported VM instances

Accelerated Networking is supported on most general purpose and compute-optimized instance sizes with 2 or more vCPUs. These supported series are: D/DSv2 and F/Fs

On instances that support hyperthreading, Accelerated Networking is supported on VM instances with 4 or more vCPUs. Supported series are: D/DSv3, E/ESv3, Fsv2, and Ms/Mms.

For more information on VM instances, see Linux VM sizes.

Regions

Available in all public Azure regions as well as Azure Government Clouds.

Enabling Accelerated Networking on a running VM

A supported VM size without accelerated networking enabled can only have the feature enabled when it is stopped and deallocated.

Deployment through Azure Resource Manager

Virtual machines (classic) cannot be deployed with Accelerated Networking.

Create a Linux VM with Azure Accelerated Networking

Though this article provides steps to create a virtual machine with accelerated networking using the Azure CLI, you can also create a virtual machine with accelerated networking using the Azure portal. When creating a virtual machine in the portal, under Settings, select Enabled, under Accelerated networking. The option to enable accelerated networking doesn’t appear in the portal unless you’ve selected a supported operating system and VM size. After the virtual machine is created, you need to complete the instructions in Confirm that accelerated networking is enabled.

Create a virtual network

Install the latest Azure CLI and log in to an Azure account using az login. In the following examples, replace example parameter names with your own values. Example parameter names included myResourceGroup, myNic, and myVm.

Create a resource group with az group create. The following example creates a resource group named myResourceGroup in the centralus location:

az group create –name myResourceGroup –location centralus

Select a supported Linux region listed in Linux accelerated networking.

Create a virtual network with az network vnet create. The following example creates a virtual network named myVnet with one subnet:

az network vnet create
–resource-group myResourceGroup
–name myVnet
–address-prefix 192.168.0.0/16
–subnet-name mySubnet
–subnet-prefix 192.168.1.0/24

Create a network security group

Create a network security group with az network nsg create. The following example creates a network security group named myNetworkSecurityGroup:

az network nsg create
–resource-group myResourceGroup
–name myNetworkSecurityGroup

The network security group contains several default rules, one of which disables all inbound access from the Internet. Open a port to allow SSH access to the virtual machine with az network nsg rule create:

az network nsg rule create
–resource-group myResourceGroup
–nsg-name myNetworkSecurityGroup
–name Allow-SSH-Internet
–access Allow
–protocol Tcp
–direction Inbound
–priority 100
–source-address-prefix Internet
–source-port-range “*”
–destination-address-prefix “*”
–destination-port-range 22

Create a network interface with accelerated networking

Create a public IP address with az network public-ip create. A public IP address isn’t required if you don’t plan to access the virtual machine from the Internet, but to complete the steps in this article, it is required.

az network public-ip create
–name myPublicIp
–resource-group myResourceGroup

Create a network interface with az network nic create with accelerated networking enabled. The following example creates a network interface named myNic in the mySubnet subnet of the myVnet virtual network and associates the myNetworkSecurityGroup network security group to the network interface:

az network nic create
–resource-group myResourceGroup
–name myNic
–vnet-name myVnet
–subnet mySubnet
–accelerated-networking true
–public-ip-address myPublicIp
–network-security-group myNetworkSecurityGroup

Create a VM and attach the NIC

When you create the VM, specify the NIC you created with –nics. Select a size and distribution listed in Linux accelerated networking.

Create a VM with az vm create. The following example creates a VM named myVM with the UbuntuLTS image and a size that supports Accelerated Networking (Standard_DS4_v2):

az vm create
–resource-group myResourceGroup
–name myVM
–image UbuntuLTS
–size Standard_DS4_v2
–admin-username azureuser
–generate-ssh-keys
–nics myNic

For a list of all VM sizes and characteristics, see Linux VM sizes.

Once the VM is created, output similar to the following example output is returned. Take note of the publicIpAddress. This address is used to access the VM in subsequent steps.

{
“fqdns”: “”,
“id”: “/subscriptions/<ID>/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/myVM”,
“location”: “centralus”,
“macAddress”: “00-0D-3A-23-9A-49”,
“powerState”: “VM running”,
“privateIpAddress”: “192.168.0.4”,
“publicIpAddress”: “40.68.254.142”,
“resourceGroup”: “myResourceGroup”
}

Confirm that accelerated networking is enabled

Use the following command to create an SSH session with the VM. Replace <your-public-ip-address> with the public IP address assigned to the virtual machine you created, and replace azureuser if you used a different value for –admin-username when you created the VM.

ssh azureuser@<your-public-ip-address>

From the Bash shell, enter uname -r and confirm that the kernel version is one of the following versions, or greater:

  • Ubuntu 16.04: 4.11.0-1013
  • SLES SP3: 4.4.92-6.18
  • RHEL: 7.4.2017120423
  • CentOS: 7.4.20171206

Confirm the Mellanox VF device is exposed to the VM with the lspci command. The returned output is similar to the following output:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX – 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (AGP disabled) (rev 03)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 01)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
0000:00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
0000:00:08.0 VGA compatible controller: Microsoft Corporation Hyper-V virtual VGA
0001:00:02.0 Ethernet controller: Mellanox Technologies MT27500/MT27520 Family [ConnectX-3/ConnectX-3 Pro Virtual Function]

Check for activity on the VF (virtual function) with the ethtool -S eth0 | grep vf_ command. If you receive output similar to the following sample output, accelerated networking is enabled and working.

vf_rx_packets: 992956
vf_rx_bytes: 2749784180
vf_tx_packets: 2656684
vf_tx_bytes: 1099443970
vf_tx_dropped: 0

Accelerated Networking is now enabled for your VM.

Enable Accelerated Networking on existing VMs

If you have created a VM without Accelerated Networking, it is possible to enable this feature on an existing VM. The VM must support Accelerated Networking by meeting the following prerequisites that are also outlined above:

  • The VM must be a supported size for Accelerated Networking
  • The VM must be a supported Azure Gallery image (and kernel version for Linux)
  • All VMs in an availability set or VMSS must be stopped/deallocated before enabling Accelerated Networking on any NIC

Individual VMs & VMs in an availability set

First stop/deallocate the VM or, if an Availability Set, all the VMs in the Set:

az vm deallocate
–resource-group myResourceGroup
–name myVM

Important, please note, if your VM was created individually, without an availability set, you only need to stop/deallocate the individual VM to enable Accelerated Networking. If your VM was created with an availability set, all VMs contained in the availability set will need to be stopped/deallocated before enabling Accelerated Networking on any of the NICs.

Once stopped, enable Accelerated Networking on the NIC of your VM:

az network nic update
–name myNic
–resource-group myResourceGroup
–accelerated-networking true

Restart your VM or, if in an Availability Set, all the VMs in the Set and confirm that Accelerated Networking is enabled:

az vm start –resource-group myResourceGroup
–name myVM

VMSS

VMSS is slightly different but follows the same workflow. First, stop the VMs:

az vmss deallocate
–name myvmss
–resource-group myrg

Once the VMs are stopped, update the Accelerated Networking property under the network interface:

az vmss update –name myvmss
–resource-group myrg
–set virtualMachineProfile.networkProfile.networkInterfaceConfigurations[0].enableAcceleratedNetworking=true

Please note, a VMSS has VM upgrades that apply updates using three different settings, automatic, rolling and manual. In these instructions the policy is set to automatic so that the VMSS will pick up the changes immediately after restarting. To set it to automatic so that the changes are immediately picked up:

az vmss update
–name myvmss
–resource-group myrg
–set upgradePolicy.mode=”automatic”

Finally, restart the VMSS:

az vmss start
–name myvmss
–resource-group myrg

Once you restart, wait for the upgrades to finish but once completed, the VF will appear inside the VM. (Please make sure you are using a supported OS and VM size.)

Resizing existing VMs with Accelerated Networking

VMs with Accelerated Networking enabled can only be resized to VMs that support Accelerated Networking.

A VM with Accelerated Networking enabled cannot be resized to a VM instance that does not support Accelerated Networking using the resize operation. Instead, to resize one of these VMs:

  • Stop/Deallocate the VM or if in an availability set/VMSS, stop/deallocate all the VMs in the set/VMSS.
  • Accelerated Networking must be disabled on the NIC of the VM or if in an availability set/VMSS, all VMs in the set/VMSS.
  • Once Accelerated Networking is disabled, the VM/availability set/VMSS can be moved to a new size that does not support Accelerated Networking and restarted.





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