Enable enhanced networking with the Intel 82599 VF interface on Linux instances
Amazon EC2 provides enhanced networking capabilities through the Intel 82599 VF interface,
which uses the Intel ixgbevf
driver.
Contents
Requirements
To prepare for enhanced networking using the Intel 82599 VF interface, set up your instance as follows:
-
Select from the following supported instance types: C3, C4, D2, I2, M4 (excluding
m4.16xlarge
), and R3. -
Launch the instance from an HVM AMI using Linux kernel version of 2.6.32 or later. The latest Amazon Linux HVM AMIs have the modules required for enhanced networking installed and have the required attributes set. Therefore, if you launch an Amazon EBS–backed, enhanced networking–supported instance using a current Amazon Linux HVM AMI, enhanced networking is already enabled for your instance.
Warning Enhanced networking is supported only for HVM instances. Enabling enhanced networking with a PV instance can make it unreachable. Setting this attribute without the proper module or module version can also make your instance unreachable.
-
Ensure that the instance has internet connectivity.
-
Use Amazon CloudShell
from the Amazon Web Services Management Console, or install and configure the Amazon CLI or the Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell on any computer you choose, preferably your local desktop or laptop. For more information, see Access Amazon EC2 or the Amazon CloudShell User Guide. Enhanced networking cannot be managed from the Amazon EC2 console. -
If you have important data on the instance that you want to preserve, you should back that data up now by creating an AMI from your instance. Updating kernels and kernel modules, as well as enabling the
sriovNetSupport
attribute, might render incompatible instances or operating systems unreachable. If you have a recent backup, your data will still be retained if this happens.
Test whether enhanced networking is enabled
Enhanced networking with the Intel 82599 VF interface is enabled if the ixgbevf
module
is installed on your instance and the
sriovNetSupport
attribute is set.
Instance attribute (sriovNetSupport)
To check whether an instance has the enhanced networking
sriovNetSupport
attribute set, use one of the following
commands:
-
describe-instance-attribute (Amazon CLI/Amazon CloudShell)
aws ec2 describe-instance-attribute --instance-id
instance_id
--attribute sriovNetSupport -
Get-EC2InstanceAttribute (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell)
Get-EC2InstanceAttribute -InstanceId
instance-id
-Attribute sriovNetSupport
If the attribute isn't set, SriovNetSupport
is empty. If the
attribute is set, the value is simple, as shown in the following example
output.
"SriovNetSupport": {
"Value": "simple"
},
Image attribute (sriovNetSupport)
To check whether an AMI already has the enhanced networking
sriovNetSupport
attribute set, use one of the following
commands:
-
describe-images (Amazon CLI/Amazon CloudShell)
aws ec2 describe-images --image-id
ami_id
--query "Images[].SriovNetSupport" -
Get-EC2Image (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell)
(Get-EC2Image -ImageId
ami-id
).SriovNetSupport
If the attribute isn't set, SriovNetSupport
is empty. If the
attribute is set, the value is simple.
Network interface driver
Use the following command to verify that the module is being used on a
particular interface, substituting the interface name that you want to check. If
you are using a single interface (default), this is eth0
. If the
operating system supports predictable network names, this could be a name like
ens5
.
In the following example, the ixgbevf
module is
not loaded, because the listed driver is vif
.
[ec2-user ~]$
ethtool -i
eth0
driver: vif version: firmware-version: bus-info: vif-0 supports-statistics: yes supports-test: no supports-eeprom-access: no supports-register-dump: no supports-priv-flags: no
In this example, the ixgbevf
module is loaded.
This instance has enhanced networking properly configured.
[ec2-user ~]$
ethtool -i
eth0
driver: ixgbevf version: 4.0.3 firmware-version: N/A bus-info: 0000:00:03.0 supports-statistics: yes supports-test: yes supports-eeprom-access: no supports-register-dump: yes supports-priv-flags: no
Enable enhanced networking on Amazon Linux
The latest Amazon Linux HVM AMIs have the ixgbevf
module
required for enhanced networking installed and have the required
sriovNetSupport
attribute set. Therefore, if you launch an instance
type using a current Amazon Linux HVM AMI, enhanced networking is already enabled for your
instance. For more information, see Test whether enhanced networking is
enabled.
If you launched your instance using an older Amazon Linux AMI and it does not have enhanced networking enabled already, use the following procedure to enable enhanced networking.
There is no way to disable the enhanced networking attribute after you've enabled it.
To enable enhanced networking
-
Connect to your instance.
-
From the instance, run the following command to update your instance with the newest kernel and kernel modules, including
ixgbevf
:[ec2-user ~]$
sudo yum update
-
From your local computer, reboot your instance using the Amazon EC2 console or one of the following commands: reboot-instances (Amazon CLI), Restart-EC2Instance (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell).
-
Connect to your instance again and verify that the
ixgbevf
module is installed and at the minimum recommended version using the modinfo ixgbevf command from Test whether enhanced networking is enabled. -
[EBS-backed instance] From your local computer, stop the instance using the Amazon EC2 console or one of the following commands: stop-instances (Amazon CLI), Stop-EC2Instance (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell). If your instance is managed by Amazon OpsWorks, you should stop the instance in the Amazon OpsWorks console so that the instance state remains in sync.
[Instance store-backed instance] You can't stop the instance to modify the attribute. Instead, proceed to this procedure: To enable enhanced networking (instance store-backed instances).
-
From your local computer, enable the enhanced networking attribute using one of the following commands:
-
modify-instance-attribute (Amazon CLI/Amazon CloudShell)
aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute --instance-id
instance_id
--sriov-net-support simple -
Edit-EC2InstanceAttribute (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell)
Edit-EC2InstanceAttribute -InstanceId
instance_id
-SriovNetSupport "simple"
-
-
(Optional) Create an AMI from the instance, as described in Create an Amazon EBS-backed Linux AMI . The AMI inherits the enhanced networking attribute from the instance. Therefore, you can use this AMI to launch another instance with enhanced networking enabled by default.
-
From your local computer, start the instance using the Amazon EC2 console or one of the following commands: start-instances (Amazon CLI), Start-EC2Instance (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell). If your instance is managed by Amazon OpsWorks, you should start the instance in the Amazon OpsWorks console so that the instance state remains in sync.
-
Connect to your instance and verify that the
ixgbevf
module is installed and loaded on your network interface using the ethtool -i ethn
command from Test whether enhanced networking is enabled.
To enable enhanced networking (instance store-backed instances)
Follow the previous procedure until the step where you stop the instance. Create a new AMI as described in Create an instance store-backed Linux AMI, making sure to enable the enhanced networking attribute when you register the AMI.
-
register-image (Amazon CLI/Amazon CloudShell)
aws ec2 register-image --sriov-net-support simple ...
-
Register-EC2Image (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell)
Register-EC2Image -SriovNetSupport "simple"
...
Enable enhanced networking on Ubuntu
Before you begin, check if enhanced networking is already enabled on your instance.
The Quick Start Ubuntu HVM AMIs include the necessary drivers for enhanced
networking. If you have a version of ixgbevf
earlier than
2.16.4, you can install the linux-aws
kernel package to get the
latest enhanced networking drivers.
The following procedure provides the general steps for compiling the
ixgbevf
module on an Ubuntu instance.
To install the linux-aws
kernel package
-
Connect to your instance.
-
Update the package cache and packages.
ubuntu:~$
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y linux-aws
Important If during the update process, you are prompted to install
grub
, use/dev/xvda
to installgrub
, and then choose to keep the current version of/boot/grub/menu.lst
.
Enable enhanced networking on other Linux distributions
Before you begin, check if enhanced networking is already enabled on your instance. The latest Quick Start HVM AMIs include the necessary drivers for enhanced networking, therefore you do not need to perform additional steps.
The following procedure provides the general steps if you need to enable enhanced networking with the Intel 82599 VF interface on a Linux distribution other than Amazon Linux or Ubuntu. For more information, such as detailed syntax for commands, file locations, or package and tool support, see the specific documentation for your Linux distribution.
To enable enhanced networking on Linux
-
Connect to your instance.
-
Download the source for the
ixgbevf
module on your instance from Sourceforge at https://sourceforge.net/projects/e1000/files/ixgbevf%20stable/. Versions of
ixgbevf
earlier than 2.16.4, including version 2.14.2, do not build properly on some Linux distributions, including certain versions of Ubuntu. -
Compile and install the
ixgbevf
module on your instance.Warning If you compile the
ixgbevf
module for your current kernel and then upgrade your kernel without rebuilding the driver for the new kernel, your system might revert to the distribution-specificixgbevf
module at the next reboot. This could make your system unreachable if the distribution-specific version is incompatible with enhanced networking. -
Run the sudo depmod command to update module dependencies.
-
Update
initramfs
on your instance to ensure that the new module loads at boot time. -
Determine if your system uses predictable network interface names by default. Systems that use systemd or udev versions 197 or greater can rename Ethernet devices and they do not guarantee that a single network interface will be named
eth0
. This behavior can cause problems connecting to your instance. For more information and to see other configuration options, see Predictable Network Interface Nameson the freedesktop.org website. -
You can check the systemd or udev versions on RPM-based systems with the following command:
[ec2-user ~]$
rpm -qa | grep -e '^systemd-[0-9]\+\|^udev-[0-9]\+'
systemd-208-11.el7_0.2.x86_64
In the above Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 example, the systemd version is 208, so predictable network interface names must be disabled.
-
Disable predictable network interface names by adding the
net.ifnames=0
option to theGRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX
line in/etc/default/grub
.[ec2-user ~]$
sudo sed -i '/^GRUB\_CMDLINE\_LINUX/s/\"$/\ net\.ifnames\=0\"/' /etc/default/grub
-
Rebuild the grub configuration file.
[ec2-user ~]$
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
-
-
[EBS-backed instance] From your local computer, stop the instance using the Amazon EC2 console or one of the following commands: stop-instances (Amazon CLI/Amazon CloudShell), Stop-EC2Instance (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell). If your instance is managed by Amazon OpsWorks, you should stop the instance in the Amazon OpsWorks console so that the instance state remains in sync.
[Instance store-backed instance] You can't stop the instance to modify the attribute. Instead, proceed to this procedure: To enable enhanced networking (instance store–backed instances).
-
From your local computer, enable the enhanced networking attribute using one of the following commands:
-
modify-instance-attribute (Amazon CLI/Amazon CloudShell)
aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute --instance-id
instance_id
--sriov-net-support simple -
Edit-EC2InstanceAttribute (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell)
Edit-EC2InstanceAttribute -InstanceId
instance_id
-SriovNetSupport "simple"
-
-
(Optional) Create an AMI from the instance, as described in Create an Amazon EBS-backed Linux AMI . The AMI inherits the enhanced networking attribute from the instance. Therefore, you can use this AMI to launch another instance with enhanced networking enabled by default.
Important If your instance operating system contains an
/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
file, you must delete it before creating the AMI. This file contains the MAC address for the Ethernet adapter of the original instance. If another instance boots with this file, the operating system will be unable to find the device andeth0
might fail, causing boot issues. This file is regenerated at the next boot cycle, and any instances launched from the AMI create their own version of the file. -
From your local computer, start the instance using the Amazon EC2 console or one of the following commands: start-instances (Amazon CLI), Start-EC2Instance (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell). If your instance is managed by Amazon OpsWorks, you should start the instance in the Amazon OpsWorks console so that the instance state remains in sync.
-
(Optional) Connect to your instance and verify that the module is installed.
To enable enhanced networking (instance store–backed instances)
Follow the previous procedure until the step where you stop the instance. Create a new AMI as described in Create an instance store-backed Linux AMI, making sure to enable the enhanced networking attribute when you register the AMI.
-
register-image (Amazon CLI/Amazon CloudShell)
aws ec2 register-image --sriov-net-support simple
...
-
Register-EC2Image (Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell)
Register-EC2Image -SriovNetSupport "simple"
...
Troubleshoot connectivity issues
If you lose connectivity while enabling enhanced networking, the
ixgbevf
module might be incompatible with the kernel. Try
installing the version of the ixgbevf
module included with the
distribution of Linux for your instance.
If you enable enhanced networking for a PV instance or AMI, this can make your instance unreachable.
For more information, see How
do I enable and configure enhanced networking on my EC2
instances?