KVM/libvirt host has vnet for each guest

kvm-virtualizationlibvirtubuntu-12.04virtual-machinesvirtualization

Totally new to KVM here, so maybe there is nothing wrong with my set up, but I am running 10 guest VMs on my Ubuntu 12.04 server via KVM and I just noticed that ifconfig returned a plethora of interfaces.

It looks like there is one of these for each guest:

vnet5     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr fe:54:00:51:e8:66  
          inet6 addr: fe80::fc54:ff:fe51:e866/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1707 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2506 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 
          RX bytes:1850605 (1.8 MB)  TX bytes:375034 (375.0 KB)

Does this seem right? It strikes me that I have something misconfigured somewhere.

What are these anyway?

Best Answer

It's not one vnet for each guest but one vnet for each network adapter in a VM. You can configure the vnet numbers but usually they are not relevant. The vnet interfaces are bridged to either a physical or a logical (host-only) interface.