Microsoft Azure Network Adapter

Driver

The driver supports Linux and Windows only.

On Linux

Linux v6.6+ is recommended. Example of patches required:

• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/a7dfeda6fdeccab4c7c3dce9a72c4262b9530c80 for robustness
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/b1d13f7a3b5396503e6869ed627bb4eeab9b524f for performance

Source:

• https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux/blob/2.0/SPECS/kernel-azure/kernel-azure.spec
• Patches backported to the CBL-Mariner Linux kernel in 2024

Compatibility

MANA maintains feature-parity with previous Azure networking features. VMs run on hardware with both Mellanox and MANA NICs, so existing ‘mlx4’ and ‘mlx5’ support still need to be present.

The next generation of Azure Boost will introduce the Microsoft Azure Network Adapter (MANA).

See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-boost/overview#current-availability for the list of compatible VM size families, but beware that compatible VMs may run on Mellanox NICs too.

Check traffic flowing through the MANA adapter

You can get packet and byte count of the MANA Virtual Function (VF) from the routable ethN interface:

$ ethtool -S eth0 | grep -E "^[ \t]+vf"
     vf_rx_packets: 226418
     vf_rx_bytes: 99557501
     vf_tx_packets: 300422
     vf_tx_bytes: 76231291
     vf_tx_dropped: 0