Depending on the number of available network ports on your Oracle VM Servers, and whether or not you use VLANs, you can create additional networks and assign network functions to them. The exception would be the Management function, which is already assigned, and cannot be removed from the management network(s) created when the Oracle VM Servers were discovered. For example, if your Oracle VM Servers have two NICs, you create a second network with the Virtual Machine role. If your storage is connected to the Management network, you can add the Storage role to your Management network if your storage is connected to the same network as defined by the Management network.

If you have more than two ports on your Oracle VM Servers, or if you are using VLANs, you can create additional networks with the Storage role. These networks connect your Oracle VM Servers to either iSCSI or NFS-based storage. Generally, all Oracle VM Servers that belong to the same pool access the same storage. For each network created, you select a port, bond or VLAN interface on each Oracle VM Server to participate in this network.

You can also create a separate network for the Live Migrate function. After the initial server discovery, the Live Migrate role is assigned to the Management network. Oracle VM encrypts migration traffic using SSL, to protect sensitive data from exploitation and to eliminate the requirement for a dedicated network. Nonetheless, if you have sufficient network resources on your Oracle VM Servers within a server pool, you can choose to create a separate network for live migration.

Similarly, the Cluster Heartbeat network function is assigned to the Management network upon discovering the first Oracle VM Server. The heartbeat communication does not generate a lot of traffic on the network, and therefore does not have much impact on the Management network. It is however susceptible to latency. For this reason, you can choose to create a separate network for the cluster heartbeat function.

Network configuration is independent of your server pool configuration, but both entities must be taken into account when designing your overall networking infrastructure. Oracle VM Manager communicates with all Oracle VM Servers in the environment, using the management port, independent of how Oracle VM Servers are grouped to form server pools. Some network configuration in your environment might be dependent on the storage available to specific server pools. Virtual machines deployed from separate server pools might use the same external network. For this reason, it is best to plan your network design based on current network and storage setup as well as anticipated growth.

The next sections of this chapter describe how to use Oracle VM Manager to translate the network structure of your Oracle VM environment into VLAN Groups and networks. If you expect to use bonding of network ports in your environment, create those first. If your environment contains VLANs, create the VLAN Groups to support your VLAN setup. You can then specify the VLAN segments contained in these VLAN Groups when creating your networks.