@JaredBusch said in KVM networking with libvirt (virsh) questions:

I assume that Debian 11 uses NetworkManager? I don't have a clean Debian system running KVM to check.

If so nmcli and its related commands are your friend.

Thanks Jared.

Reading about nmcli and seeing your screenshots led me to understand that macvtap devices are only active when the VM is actually running.

Using ip link I can now see the macvtap device on the host. One for each VM connected.

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@EddieJennings said in MacVTap Modes:

One option I didn't see in the redhat doc was openvswitch. Don't they support it?

The link I posted was for RHEL 6. I just now saw that RHEL 8's documentation is online. I glanced through it and didn't see that mentioned. I'll read it more closely tomorrow.

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/configuring_and_managing_virtualization/configuring-virtual-machine-network-connections_configuring-and-managing-virtualization

There's no mention of openvswitch anywhere in that document. I am aware of XenServer and XCP-ng uses it by default. So its possible RHEL just prefers using macvlan/macvtap instead of openvswitch.