How to enable RSS on Windows Server 2012R2

Windows

Products

Windows 2012R2

Description

RSS abbreviated for Receive Side Scaling, should be enabled on a VM Server as it betters performance.

Per Microsoft’s website, Virtual Receive-side scaling (RSS) is a feature in Windows Server 2012 R2 that allows the load from a virtual network adapter to be distributed across multiple virtual processors in a virtual machine.

By Default, RSS is enabled on Server 2016 and 2019 but cannot be enabled on Windows Server 2008 R2 or below.

On Server 2012 or R2 you can enable it using a simple PowerShell command.

Solution

To enable RSS run following powershell commands:

Get adapter Name 
Get-NetAdapter
Enable RSS by adapter name 
Enable-NetAdapterRss -Name “Ethernet”
Combine both commands to enable RSS on all Adapters 
Get-Netadapter | Enable-NetAdapterRss
To enable from a command prompt 
netsh interface tcp set global rss=enabled

This can also be enabled from the GUI.  Check the Network Advanced tab and find Receive Side Scaling.  Set this to Enabled if it isn’t already.

Network-Adapter-Properties-Advanced-Receive-Side-Scaling