What is the primary purpose of a Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) in OCI?

The primary purpose of a Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is to provide a secure and isolated network environment for resources. A VCN allows you to create a private network within OCI, offering control over networking settings such as IP address ranges, route tables, security lists, and gateways.

By establishing this private network, users can ensure that their cloud resources, such as virtual machines and databases, are not only separated from the public internet but also from other resources in the cloud that may not need to interact with their sensitive data. This isolation is vital for security, allowing for better control over who can access what resources and thereby maintaining compliance with various regulatory requirements.

While connecting data centers, serving as a backup, and handling database operations are important in various networking contexts, they are not the primary functions of a VCN in OCI. The specific goal of encapsulating resources in a secure and controlled environment clearly underscores the fundamental role of VCNs in cloud architecture.