The networking infrastructure in the Oracle VM environment comprises connections between:

These networking connections can leverage features supported by Oracle VM, such as networked file systems, clustering, redundancy and load balancing, bridging, and support for Virtual LANs (VLANs).

In Oracle VM Manager, network configuration is the mapping of available network interfaces on the Oracle VM Servers to a set of logical Ethernet networks. The physical network is the collection of physical connections in Oracle VM Manager and all Oracle VM Servers, and the switches and routers that allow information to reach its destination. A logical network in Oracle VM is built on top of these physical connections. Before you define the logical networks in Oracle VM Manager, you have to review the physical network configuration that you intend to use, such as VLAN and subnet usage. You also take into account the number of network interfaces available to your Oracle VM Servers. The minimum recommended number of ports required on a single Oracle VM Server is two, although one would suffice for test or demonstration purposes. If you have more than two ports on your Oracle VM Servers, you can design more redundancy or traffic isolation in your environment.

Oracle VM identifies different network functions: server management, live migration, cluster heartbeat, virtual machine, and storage. All network functions can either be on dedicated or shared physical networks (except for the virtual machine intra-server network). For example, a physical network can be dedicated to Virtual Machine or Storage only, or can be dedicated for all network functions. For details about network functions, see Section 5.6, “How are Network Functions Separated in Oracle VM?”.

After reviewing your physical network environment and deciding on the logical distribution and grouping of these physical objects, you create the logical constructs in Oracle VM Manager to implement your network design. These logical constructs include network bonds, VLAN Interfaces, networks and bridges. If your network design includes interface bonding, or aggregations of two ports, you create these network bonds first. These bonds are often used in conjunction with VLANs, when traffic from several VLANs is allowed to use the same bond. If your network environment comprises VLANs, your next step is to create VLAN Interfaces, determining which port or bond on each Oracle VM Server will accept traffic from which VLANs.

After careful evaluation of the available network building blocks and required network functions, you create the necessary logical networks by choosing one of these types:

For more detailed information about networking within Oracle VM, see Chapter 5, Understanding Networks.