7.3 Configuring Data Center Switches for VLAN Traffic

Warning

This section applies only to systems with an InfiniBand-based network architecture. The configuration described in this section is valid for the outbound connections through the Oracle Fabric Interconnect F1-15s .

The Oracle Private Cloud Appliance network infrastructure supports the use of VLANs by default. For this purpose, the Oracle Fabric Interconnect F1-15s are set to trunking mode to allow tagged data traffic.

Caution

Do not configure any type of link aggregation group (LAG) across the 10GbE ports: LACP, network/interface bonding or similar methods to combine multiple network connections are not supported.

To provide additional bandwidth to the environment hosted by the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance, create custom networks. For detailed information, see Section 2.6, “Network Customization”.

You may implement VLANs for logical separation of different network segments, or to define security boundaries between networks with different applications – just as you would with physical servers instead of virtual machines.

However, to allow virtual machines hosted by the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance to communicate with systems external to the appliance, you must update the configuration of your next-level data center switches accordingly.

  • The switch ports on the receiving end of the outbound appliance connections must be part of each VLAN used within the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance environment.

  • The same ports must also be part of the network(s) connecting the external systems that your virtual machines need to access. For example, WAN connectivity implies that virtual machines are able to reach the public gateway in your data center. As an alternative to VLAN tagging, Layer 3 routing can be used to connect to the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance.