The initial Oracle VM Server installation configures the bare minimum network configuration. This allows Oracle VM Servers to set up their networking sufficiently to establish communication with Oracle VM Manager.

User created network devices (VLAN or a bond) on an Oracle VM Server are discovered by Oracle VM Manager, but these network devices are not associated with logical networks.

The management network, created during the Oracle VM installation, has the following network functions:

When an Oracle VM Server is discovered, the port on which the Oracle VM Manager discovers the Oracle VM Server is added to this management network, and the port is configured as a bonded interface. See Section 5.4, “Network Bonding” for details about network bonding. You can add a port to this bond, and you can add or remove network functions for this network other than the management role. You can also remove the Oracle VM Server management interfaces from the management network temporarily if you wish to add them to a VLAN group and configure VLAN interfaces for management traffic and other network functions separately. Other changes are not permitted. You can make the allowed changes to the configuration of the management network at any time using Oracle VM Manager. See Section 5.11, “Editing Network Data” for details about changing a network configuration in Oracle VM Manager.

Additional network configuration beyond what is done through the discovery process must be done using Oracle VM Manager.

All network configurations are persistent on the Oracle VM Servers to allow HA to work without requiring Oracle VM Manager. This includes enough logical information to allow the configuration to be recreated on Oracle VM Manager in the event that the Oracle VM Manager database is lost. All network configuration is also persistent on Oracle VM Manager.

When you build a new network, you use ports, bond ports or VLAN interfaces as building blocks for the network. For more information on network building blocks, see Section 5.3, “Building a Network Environment”. You must also select the network usage for your new network. For a discussion of network functions and rules associated with them, consult Section 5.7, “Creating Additional Networks”.

This section discusses managing networks.