2.3.4 Using InfiniBand Partitioning for Network Isolation with InfiniBand Network Fabric

An InfiniBand partition defines a group of InfiniBand nodes or members that are allowed to communicate with one another.

InfiniBand partitioning enables network separation between different clusters on systems with InfiniBand Network Fabric.

InfiniBand partitions are created and managed by the master subnet manager. Each partition is identified by a unique partition key, and partition members use the key for communication within the partition. Members within a partition can only communicate among themselves.

With Oracle Exadata, each database cluster uses a dedicated network partition for cluster networking between the database servers. All of the database servers can communicate freely within the partition, other but cannot communicate with database servers in other partitions. Another partition enables communication between each database cluster and the storage servers. By using this partition, database servers can communicate with all of the storage servers, storage servers can communicate with all of the database servers that they support, and storage servers can communicate directly with each other to perform cell-to-cell operations.

You can use InfiniBand partitioning on physical or virtual machine (VM) deployments.

For details see Configuring InfiniBand Partitioning.