The Management channel is used to manage the physical Oracle VM Servers in a server pool, for example, to update the Oracle VM Agent on the different Oracle VM Servers. This network function is assigned to at least one network by default.
In Oracle VM the management network interface and the public interface (i.e. default route) are expected to be the same on each Oracle VM Server. Other types of network usage are allowed on the same interface, for example through the use of VLANs and/or network bridges.
The first step in configuring your Oracle VM environment is to discover your Oracle VM Servers. This step assumes that the Oracle VM Manager host and all of the Oracle VM Servers can communicate over the same network, though the Oracle VM Servers and Oracle VM Manager can reside in different subnets. When you discover the first Oracle VM Server, the management network is created automatically and takes its name from the subnet to which the Oracle VM Server is connected. Each additional Oracle VM Server discovered is either on a previously known subnet, or a new subnet. If the Oracle VM Server is on a new subnet then a new management network is constructed; if the Oracle VM Server is on a known subnet then it is simply added to that subnet. Each server in your Oracle VM environment can only have one interface designated for management, belonging to a single management network object in the Oracle VM Manager's database.
Although the Oracle VM Manager and its discovered and owned Oracle VM Servers may be on different subnets as long as they can reach each other, Network Address Translation (NAT) is not supported in this configuration. NAT would lead to a discrepancy between the actual management IP of the Oracle VM Server and the IP provided during discovery.
A network port on every Oracle VM Server is designated as the management interface during the installation of the Oracle VM Server and is configured as a bonded interface. Ports can be added to this bond or removed from it. Once a management network is created, it can only be deleted if no servers have ports in the management network anymore.