What is WindowsAzureNetAgent in C:\WindowsAzure folder

Question

_{Sunday, September 30, 2018 10:12 AM}

Team,

I was going through Azure Guest Agent and found another executables which is WindowsAzureNetAgent

I know when we install Windows VM from Marketplace we get the Windows Guest Agent which helps us in Extension, log collections etc.

There is no article which talks about Windows Azure Net Agent on Azure Docs.

I'm pretty sure it is not the Network monitor Extension that extension is a plugin. But the WindowsAzureNetAgent is an Agent.

Can someone please clarify? or An article about it would help

All replies (9)

_{Friday, October 12, 2018 11:14 PM ✅Answered}

Hi Quershi. I did some additional digging and reach out to some of the product groups. 

Azure Network Agent provides advanced network functionality if needed inside the VM and thus it is shipped as part of GuestAgent.

One such example is when using Accelerated Networking

/en-us/azure/virtual-network/create-vm-accelerated-networking-cli

Or if your VM is domain joined and requires additional NIC settings to be able to properly communicate. Any network settings in Azure are controlled by Azure rather than inside the VM itself. So the Network Agent helps azure to configure and manage the VMs network settings. 

_{Sunday, September 30, 2018 11:10 PM | 2 votes}

I am not 100% of everything that the NetAgent does but it is part of the Windows Guest Agent.

We don't have an article that discusses each of the executable that come with the Azure Guest Agent. But we do have a general overview of the agent itself. 

/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/extensions/agent-windows

Essentially all the files and that are installed with the Guest Agent help the VM communicate with the Azure Fabric and allow users to run extensions and the extensions to communicate properly with Azure and the VM itself. 

_{Monday, October 1, 2018 4:22 AM}

Thanks Mckittrick,

Absolutely, i know about the VM Agent as it helps VM communcate and provide multiple functionalities with Azure Fabric. But these functionalities were working fine and recent improvements caused a new agent to be deployed.

I'm curious to find what were those functionalities and the use of those dlls.

Unfortunately I cannot create a new support ticket as engineers works on break fix issues and in my scenario there is nothing which is broken.

Thanks for your reply, I wil keep this thread open and see if someone from the PG might have a look and provide some insights.

_{Monday, October 1, 2018 5:08 PM}

No problem. I am also working offline to find a PG contact to help provide additional insight. 

_{Monday, October 1, 2018 10:44 PM}

Hi Qureshi. I did confirm we do not have an official doc on unmanaged disks. We are urging all customers to move to managed disks and in fact offer an easy migration method where you can just click a button in the portal. 

The majority of customers are using managed disks which is why the managed disks doc was prioritized. 

I did submit a internal work item to see if we can get a unmanaged disk version published. 

Thank you for bringing this to our attention :) 

_{Wednesday, October 3, 2018 5:24 AM}

Thanks Mckittrick, I absolutely believe managed disk is a good technology in hand when it comes to availability set and storage account manageability. we don't have to manage the storage account IOPS and also if we are using AV Set the the azure cluster where my disk resides will be on seperate cluster. But the pricing of the managed disk is little higher as in managed disk we are only charged for what we use and not for the white spaces.

Still thanks for checking with PG for this and for DOCs.

Have a great day ahead.

_{Friday, October 5, 2018 7:05 PM}

Hi Qureshi. I just wanted to provide a quick update. I have found the correct contacts to get an answer on this for you. However many of them are out of office until next week. Once they are back I will follow up with them and provide you with an update. 

_{Saturday, October 6, 2018 4:46 PM}

Thanks for the update, waiting egerly to see the insights about the agent.

_{Monday, October 15, 2018 4:49 AM}

Thanks Mckittrick for followup.