Configuring Dedicated Ports for Equinix Fabric¶

If you are using Dedicated Ports for:

Connecting Equinix Metal to Equinix Fabric.
You want to be a Cloud Service Provider on Equinix Fabric so that other Equinix customers can make connections to your hosted service on Equinix Metal.

Then in addition to ordering your port on Equinix Metal, you will also need to place an order for the port in Equinix Fabric.

You can complete these steps anytime after you have ordered your ports in Equinix Metal and received the Letter of Authorization (LOA) from the Equinix Metal support team.

Ordering an Equinix Fabric Port¶

After you have received the LOA from Equinix Metal, you can place an order for your remote port in the Equinix Fabric Portal. From the Fabric portal main page, select Order an Equinix Fabric Port from the Ports menu.

Port Details¶

From the Create a connection to: options, select A third party who has a cage in Equinix IBX.

Then, select the Location of the remote port. The location you select must be the IBX site specified in your LOA. Please note that the patch panel location for the NNI port specified in the LOA might be in a different location than your Equinix Metal instance, but both will be in the same Metro.

Next, your Account and Port Configuration. When selecting the Port Speed, Equinix Metal supports only 10 Gbps or 100 Gbps for Dedicated Ports.

Service Details¶

On the Service Details section of your order, select the following options:

For Single vs Redundant, choose the same configuration that you choose on Equinix Metal. So if you choose redundant ports, select Redundant Port(s) and Two new ports as a redundant pair. If you choose a single port, select A Single Port. LAG ports are not supported.
Equinix Metal only supports Dot1Q on the Fabric side.
Equinix Metal only supports 0x8100 TPID encapsulation.

Connection Details¶

On the Connection Details page, upload the LOA provided from Equinix Metal.

Contact and Billing Information¶

Confirm your contact information, and add any necessary Ordering Contacts and Technical Contacts.

Review¶

Lastly, review the pricing information, and accept the Terms and Conditions. When everything looks right, submit your order.

Monitoring the Ordering Process¶

When you submit an order for your port through Equinix Fabric, a work order is created and an IBX technician completes the installation according to the order and LOA.

When the installation is complete, you will be notified by email of port order completion. You will need to forward the order completion email to support@equinixmetal.com. This step is required. Your order does not proceed unless your forward the completion email to Equinix Metal.

As the final physical configuration step, Equinix Metal completes the port configuration process on the Equinix Metal hardware side. You will be again notified by email when the set up for the Dedicated Port is complete.

Finishing the Interconnection Configuration¶

Once your port is physically ready on both sides, the Equinix Metal console will show the Dedicated Port status as Active.

And at least one of your Primary or Secondary Ports will be Active.

You are now ready to:

Create Virtual Circuits and attach VLANs in Equinix Metal.
Create your virtual connections from your port in the Fabric Portal to other destinations on Fabric.

A few things to keep in mind when getting set up:

The Equinix Metal Dedicated Port is the A-side. So when you set up a connection in Equinix Fabric, select the new Dedicated Port from Equinix Metal as the A-Side (Origin) and where you are connecting to in Equinix Fabric as the Z-side (Destination).
The VLAN identifier on the Equinix Metal side and the Fabric side need to match. It also needs to be an integer between 2 and 3999, and unique on the Equinix Metal side.

For example, if you assign 200 as the NNI VLAN on the Equinix Metal side of the connection:

Then, when you set up the virtual connection from the port in Equinix Fabric, assign 200 as the VLAN ID.