Networking issues can disrupt workloads and lead to costly downtime. Network HUD brings real-time health monitoring to Windows Server clusters, helping you catch misconfigurations and drift before they impact performance. Now you can operate with confidence and keep your networking aligned to best practices.
Why Network HUD?
Managing host networking isn’t easy. Small misconfigurations, outdated drivers, or bandwidth oversubscription can quickly lead to performance issues or outages. Network HUD simplifies this by continuously monitoring your cluster’s networking health and surfacing actionable insights. It helps you:
- Detect unstable adapters and PCIe oversubscription early
- Identify incompatible or outdated drivers before they cause failures
- Detect inconsistent storage issues with physical network (PFC/ETS)
- Detect misconfigured network configurations (VLANs)
- Ensures consistent checks across the cluster
- Reduce troubleshooting time and support cases
Network HUD goes beyond the host level. It parses LLDP information from physical switches to validate configurations and detect mismatches. This integration ensures your fabric configuration aligns with your host configuration, reducing the risk of connectivity issues.
To learn more about Network HUD please refer to our Learn documentation: What is Network HUD for Windows Server? | Microsoft Learn
Consider an example scenario: A VM in your Windows Server cluster is unable to connect to the Internet, as its VLAN Configuration is incorrect. Without visibility, this VM might silently fail to reach external resources, causing application downtime or degraded performance. Network HUD detects this issue by parsing and matching VLAN settings configured on your switches and VLAN settings configured on your VMs. When it finds a mismatch, Network HUD surfaces an alert and informs you so you can take corrective action or prevent further misconfigurations across the cluster.
How to Get Started
Network HUD is delivered as an Arc extension for Windows Server clusters, enabling hybrid management and scale-out deployment. For a full guide, please refer to our Learn documentation: Install Network HUD for Windows Server (preview) | Microsoft Learn
Getting Network HUD up and running is simple:
- Ensure all the servers in your cluster are Arc enabled
- Navigate to Azure Portal
- For each server in the cluster, click on the Network HUD tile, to enable the Network HUD Arc extension.
- Once Network HUD is installed and enabled, your portal UI should look like this:
How to See Alerts
Now that Network HUD is setup, Network HUD surfaces health faults in multiple places:
- Windows Admin Center (WAC): Navigate to the top right corner of your WAC Cluster Manager view and click on the bell icon to view alerts and faults.
- PowerShell: Use Get-HealthFault on the Windows Server machine for operational and diagnostic logs.
Get-HealthFault -Cluster $cluster | Where Reason -like '*hud*'
Summary
Network HUD is your proactive networking assistant for Windows Server. By combining host-level diagnostics with physical switch insights, it helps you maintain a stable, high-performant environment. Whether you’re deploying new clusters or managing existing ones, Network HUD ensures you stay ahead of issues...before they impact workloads.
We can't wait for you to try out Network HUD!
For any questions, reach out to us at: edgenetfeedback@microsoft.com
Microsoft