Category: System Administration

Fixing network related issues of AWS hosted Windows servers

There are some cases when working with AWS hosted Windows systems, all of a sudden the network related issues start to trigger

These issues may relate to;

  • Lack of network connectivity.
  • Low throughput
  • No connectivity with the Windows based VPN solutions.

to fix all the above issues, you just needa to update the Para-Virtualization Drivers on Your Windows Instances.

Para-Virtualization – what is PV

Amazon Windows AMIs contain a set of drivers to permit access to virtualized hardware. These drivers are used by Amazon EC2 to map instance store and Amazon EBS volumes to their devices. We recommend that you install the latest drivers to improve stability and performance of your EC2 Windows instances.

Resolution:

Simply, please install / update the PV drivers for Windows https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/Upgrading_PV_drivers.html

How to change network card priority in Windows Servers

There are occasions where the sys admins need to select the default NIC out of multiple NICs. Specially when it comes to working with NIC teaming & etc.

To solve this, you just have to tell your computer which network card you want it to use first.

Just launch the Run command and enter “ncpa.cpl“.
As you can see, you have all your network cards available in this window.

Next, if you press the “ALT” key, you will show different tabs appear in the top.
Click on the “Advanced” tab and then “Advanced Settings”

A window will appear with the different network cards and the different parameters for IPv4 and IPv6.

There, you just have to select the one you want to use in priority and click on the up arrow and put it at the top of the list.