Customer Site Network Requirements

Network Overview

The Compute Cloud@Customer infrastructure uses these networks.

• Data Network: The infrastructure's data connectivity is built on redundant 100-Gbit switches in two-layer design similar to a leaf-spine topology. An infrastructure contains two leaf and two spine switches. The leaf switches interconnect the rack hardware components, while the spine switches form the backbone of the network and provide a path for external traffic.
• Uplinks: Uplinks are the connections between the infrastructure and the customer data center. For external connectivity, 5 ports are reserved on each spine switch. Four ports are available to establish the uplinks between the infrastructure and the data center network; one port is used to segregate the administration network from the data traffic.
• Administration Network: This required network is configured as a physically separated network from the data network. This isolates configuration and management traffic from the operational activity on the data network by providing dedicated secured network paths for administration operations. This network includes all component management interfaces.

  Setting up a segregated administration network involves the following actions:

  • Extra Ethernet connections from the next-level data center network devices to port 5 on each of the spine switches in the rack.
  • Inside the administration network, the spine switches must each have one IP address and a virtual IP shared between the two.
  • A default gateway is required to route traffic, and NTP and DNS services must be enabled.
  • The management nodes must be assigned host names and IP addresses in the administration network, one each individually, and one shared between all three.

  A separate administration network can be used with both static and dynamic routing. The use of a VLAN is supported, but when combined with static routing the VLAN ID must be different from the one configured for the data network.

• Reserved Network Resources: infrastructure requires many IP addresses and several VLANs for internal operation.

Network Configuration Requirements

On each spine switch, ports 1-4 can be used for uplinks to the data center network. For speeds of 10-Gbps or 25-Gbps, the spine switch port must be split using a 4-way splitter or breakout cable. For higher speeds of 40-Gbps or 100-Gbps each switch port uses a single direct cable connection.

The uplinks are configured during system initialization, based on information you provide. Unused spine switch uplink ports, including unused breakout ports, are disabled for security reasons.

It is critical that both spine switches have the same connections to the next-level data center switches. This configuration provides redundancy and load splitting at the level of the spine switches, the ports and the data center switches. This outbound cabling depends on the network topology you deploy. The cabling pattern is essential to the continuation of service during failover scenarios.

• Before installation, you must run network cables from your existing network infrastructure to the Oracle Compute Cloud@Customer rack installation site.

• Plan to connect at least 1 high-speed Ethernet port on each spine switch to your data center public Ethernet network.

• Configuring the required Administration network requires 2 more cable connections (one each from port 5 on the two spine switches) to a pair of next-level data center switches.

• Uplink connectivity is based on layer 3 of the OSI model.

• If you have security policies requiring the use of proxies for all internet connections,you can use an HTTP proxy. This is a passive/corporate proxy supported for the connection from Compute Cloud@Customer to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Customer HTTPS, challenge proxy, and traffic inspection aren't supported.

• A corporate HTTP proxy between the Compute Cloud@Customer infrastructure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure isn't recommended with FastConnect because FastConnect is already a dedicated network. If a corporate proxy is required, then the proxy needs to have additional routing to ensure that Compute Cloud@Customer network traffic is sent over FastConnect.