ENI/ENA/EFA

Question 1

What does ENI stand for?

Answer 1

Elastic Network Interface

Question 2

What is ENI?

Answer 2

logical networking component in a VPC that represents a virtual network card​

Question 3

Suppose you wanted to create separate networks to handle production traffic and database traffic. What networking solution would you use for this?

Answer 3

Use multiple ENIs (one for each network)

Question 4

What does EN stand for?

Answer 4

Enhanced Networking

Question 5

What does SR-IOV stand for?

Answer 5

Single Root I/O Virtualization

Question 6

Why is SR-IOV important?

Answer 6

a method of device virtualization that provides higher I/O performance and lower CPU utilization vs. traditional network interfaces

Question 7

What is Enhanced Networking?

Answer 7

Enhanced Networking uses SR-IOV to provide high-performance networking capabilities on supported instance types.

Question 8

What are the specific performance optimizations offered by Enhanced Networking?

Answer 8

• higher bandwidth
• higher packets per second performance
• consistently lower inter-instance latencies

Question 9

What is the pricing model for Enhanced Networking?

Answer 9

There is no additional charge for enhanced networking

Question 10

In general, what is the use case for Enhanced Networking?

Answer 10

Use it when you want good network performance

Question 11

Why doesn’t every instance use Enhanced Networking?

Answer 11

It is only available / feasible on certain instance types

Question 12

What are the two ways to enable Enhanced Networking on your instance type?

Answer 12

• Elastic Network Adapter (ENA)
• Virtual Function (VF)

_{(Depends on your instance type)}

Question 13

What does ENA stand for?

Answer 13

Elastic Network Adapter

Question 14

What does VF stand for?

Answer 14

Virtual Function

Question 15

What network speeds does ENA support?

Answer 15

Up to 100 Gbps (gigabits per second)

Question 16

What network speeds does VF support?

Answer 16

Up to 10 Gbps

Question 17

What is the use case for VF Enhanced Networking?

Answer 17

It is typically used on older instances

_{(in a scenario question, given the choice between ENA and VF, you probably want to take ENA)}

Question 18

What does EFA stand for?

Answer 18

Elastic Fabric Adapter

Question 19

What does EFA do?

Answer 19

Elastic Fabric Adapter is a networking device that you can attach to an EC2 instance to accelerate High Performance Computing and Machine Learning operations.

It can also be used to perform OS-bypass.

Question 20

What is OS-Bypass?

Answer 20

OS-bypass enables High-Performance Computing and ML to bypass the OS kernel and communicate directly with an EFA device

_{(Linux only, not supported on Windows yet)}

Question 21

What does HPC stand for?

Answer 21

High-Performance Computing