networking-management_skill

Overview

This skill provides expert guidance for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) networking design, troubleshooting, and cost optimization. It highlights critical OCI-specific rules and gotchas — Service Gateway egress savings, immutable VCN CIDRs, Security List limits, peering behavior, and Load Balancer subnet requirements. Use it to avoid common anti-patterns and plan scalable, secure VCN architectures.

How this skill works

The skill inspects common OCI networking decisions and recommends concrete patterns: when to use Service Gateway vs Internet Gateway for cost savings, how to size VCNs and subnets, and whether to apply Security Lists or Network Security Groups (NSGs). It outlines peering options (local vs remote), transitive routing limitations, and subnet requirements for Load Balancers. When CLI or API operations are required, it directs you to use exact OCI references rather than guessing syntax.

When to use it

• Designing VCN CIDR allocation and subnet sizing for growth
• Optimizing egress costs for Object Storage and Oracle services
• Choosing Security Lists vs NSGs for segmentation and scale
• Planning VCN peering or cross-region connectivity
• Configuring High Availability Load Balancers in multiple ADs

Best practices

• Plan VCN CIDR as immutable — choose a larger block (e.g., /16) up front
• Route Oracle services via Service Gateway to avoid egress charges
• Use one Security List per subnet for baseline rules and NSGs for app-specific rules
• Do not assume peering is transitive; create explicit peerings or use DRG hub-and-spoke
• Provision /24 or larger subnets for Load Balancers and HA requirements

Example use cases

• Backup large databases to Object Storage through a Service Gateway to eliminate egress fees
• Re-architect VCNs before scaling to avoid costly migrations due to CIDR immutability
• Replace multiple overlapping security lists with NSGs for per-instance isolation
• Implement local peering for intra-region VCN segmentation and remote peering via DRG for cross-region DR
• Create two /24 subnets in different ADs before deploying a public/private Load Balancer