Guest Operating System Networking Considerations

This section describes the various types of virtual network adapters, how to select one, and how to obtain the best performance from it.

When a virtual machine is first created, VMware Cloud on AWS allows selection of the virtual network adapter (vNIC) it will use. The available options are based on the specified guest operating system and the virtual hardware version. Because some operating systems don’t have built-in drivers for the best-performing virtual network adapters, the list of available vNICs won’t always include those that might provide the best performance. In some of these cases, though, a driver can later be installed in the guest operating system (typically as part of VMware Tools) and the vNIC can then be changed to a different type.