I want to know what steps I must take before I migrate my Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance to a sixth generation instance.
Short description
Sixth generation instances might require an updated driver for the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) except for the C6g, M6g, and R6g instances. When you run earlier ENA drivers with sixth generation instances, you might experience suboptimal performance. This suboptimal performance can also lead to elastic network interface attachment failure. Before you migrate to sixth generation instances, make sure that your AMI includes compatible drivers. If you plan to launch the instance with a new AMI, then make sure that you select the correct AMI version with embedded compatible drivers.
Resolution
Linux-based operating systems
To make sure that the appropriate driver is installed before migration, follow these steps:
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If you're using Amazon Linux 2, then run the following command to verify the ENA driver version. Also, run this command if you updated the ENA driver from the Amazon ENA GitHub repository for any OS. For more information on this repository, see Amazon ENA GitHub repository on the GitHub website.
modinfo ena
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Use the command results for the following environments and versions to verify that your ENA driver is updated. If the results show an earlier version than the value in the Version column of the table, then update the driver.
Environment | Version |
---|
Linux ENA GitHub | ENA driver version v2.2.9 |
Linux upstream | Kernel version 5.9 |
Amazon Linux 2 | Kernel 4.14.186 |
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) | RHEL 8.3 kernel 4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.ARCH |
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) | SLE 12 SP4 kernel 4.12.14-95.99.3, SLE 12 SP5 kernel 4.12.14-122.116.1, SLE 15 kernel 4.12.14-150000.150.92.2, SLE 15 SP1 kernel 4.12.14-150100.197.114.2, SLE 15 SP2 kernel 5.3.18-24.15.1 and all later SLE version kernels |
Linux Ubuntu | 20.04 kernel 5.4.0-1025-aws |
DPDK | v20.11 |
FreeBSD | v2.3.1 |
Note: The following earlier ENA driver versions result in elastic network interface attachment failure with sixth generation instances.
- ENA Linux: Earlier than v1.2.0
- ENA DPDK: Earlier than v1.1.1
- ENA VMware ESXi: Earlier than 1.6.0
- ENA FreeBSD: Earlier than v2.3.1
Windows-based operating systems
Note: Only Windows Server 2008 R2 or later is compatible with sixth generation instances.
To make sure that the appropriate driver is installed before migration, follow these steps:
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Open PowerShell in the EC2 Windows instance that you want to migrate to sixth generation. Then, run the following command:
Get-WmiObject Win32_PnPSignedDriver| select devicename, driverversion | where {$_.devicename -like "*Amazon Elastic Network*"}
The command output is similar to the following:
devicename driverversion
---------- -------------
Amazon Elastic Network Adapter 2.1.4.0
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If the command's output shows that the driver version is earlier than v2.0.0, then update the driver. Driver versions earlier than v2.0.0 result in elastic network interface attachment failure with sixth generation instances.
If the command has no output, then a driver isn't present. For information on installing a driver, see Enable enhanced networking on Windows.
Related information
Enable enhanced networking with the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) on Windows instances