The Virtual Machine channel is used for the network traffic between the different virtual machines in a server pool. The Virtual Machine channel can be either standard Inter-Server (routable through standard switches), or Intra-Server (without a route to an external physical network and dedicated to the selected Oracle VM Server). The implications of using an Intra-Server network for your Virtual Machine channel are discussed more in Section 5.7.4, “Logical Networks on a Single Oracle VM Server (Intra-Server)”.

Note that it is possible, and very likely, to have multiple networks with the Virtual Machine channel in one Oracle VM Manager.

Virtual Machine networks necessarily make use of network bridging to allow virtual machines running on different Oracle VM Servers to be able to communicate. This network bridging is discussed in more detail in Section 5.6.5.1, “Network Bridges”.