How do I install or upgrade drivers for my Windows EC2 instance?

Short description

There are three types of AWS drivers that you can use on EC2 Windows instances:

• Paravirtual (PV) drivers
• AWS NVMe drivers
• Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) drivers

The type of AWS driver that you use depends on the instance type. Most Nitro-based instances use the ENA driver for networking and the AWS NVMe driver for storage. Most Xen-based instances use the AWS PV driver for both network and storage. Some instances use a combination of drivers for storage and networking.

To review a table of instance types and what drivers to use for networking and storage, see Summary of networking and storage features. In the Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) columns of the table, EBS only indicates that the volume uses AWS PV drivers. NVME EBS indicates that the instance uses NVMe drivers.

Note: AWS PV drivers are supported on Windows Server 2008 R2 and later. Windows Server 2003 uses Citrix PV drivers. Windows Server 2008 R2 supports AWS PV version 8.3.4 and earlier and AWS ENA 2.2.3 and earlier. For more information, see Paravirtual drivers for Windows instances.

When you upgrade drivers on Windows instances or change the instance type, migrate to latest generation instance types.

Note: To list the AWS drivers and driver versions that run on the Windows instance, run this Windows PowerShell command:

Get-WmiObject Win32_PnpSignedDriver | Select-Object DeviceName, DriverVersion, InfName | Where-Object {$_.DeviceName -like "*AWS*" -OR $_.DeviceName -like "*Amazon*"}

Resolution

PV drivers

To install or upgrade AWS PV drivers, Citrix PV drivers, and RedHat PV drivers, see Paravirtual drivers for Windows instances.

AWS NVMe drivers

To install or upgrade AWS NVMe drivers, see AWS NVMe drivers for Windows instances.

ENA drivers

To install ENA drivers, see Activate enhanced networking with the ENA on Windows instances. For the Intel 82599 VF interface, see Activate enhanced networking with the Intel 82599 VF interface on Windows instances.

Use Systems Manager to upgrade drivers

You can also use the AWS Systems Manager AWSSupport-UpgradeWindowsAWSDrivers runbook to upgrade drivers. For more information, see Upgrade the AWS PV, ENA, and NVMe drivers using Systems Manager.

Related information

How can I troubleshoot an EC2 Windows instance that is unreachable or can't reach the DNS after upgrading the drivers?

How do I use the UpgradeWindowsAWSDrivers runbook to upgrade or repair storage and network AWS drivers on an EC2 Windows instance?

Troubleshoot PV drivers