Fabric Billed Fabric Virtual Connections¶
Fabric Billed Fabric Virtual Connections are used to make a connection from your Fabric ports or Network Edge devices to Equinix Metal, either within the same metro or across metros. Use-cases include using a Network Edge device as a router for your Equinix Metal services or connecting Equinix Metal to cloud service provider across Metros. All usage, Network Edge, and virtual device charges will appear on your Equinix Fabric account.
Note: this feature replaces Shared Ports for previous users of Equinix Fabric and Network Edge devices with their Equinix Metal infrastructure. Existing Shared Port Interconnections will continue to work, and will be indicated in the portal and API as Legacy.
General Facts
- Each Fabric Virtual Connection can be either a single port or a set of redundant ports. Redundant ports are recommended for some amount of high-availability. With a single port, there is no guaranteed uptime.
- Each Fabric Virtual Connection comes with a single Virtual Circuit for you to attach to a VLAN to. If you are using redundant ports, each port will have a virtual circuit. In order to have high-availability, you will need inter-vlan routing or some other layer-3 application awareness.
- Fabric Virtual Connections have a maximum bandwidth of 10 Gbps.
- Fabric Virtual Connection support up to a 9000 byte maximum transmission unit (MTU) and jumbo Ethernet frames.
Origins and Destinations
Origin | Destination | Supported |
---|---|---|
Any physical port on Fabric (not on a Service Profile) | Fabric Billed Fabric VC | Yes |
Single Virtual Device (not on a Service Profile) | Fabric Billed Fabric VC | Yes |
Clustered Virtual Device (Network Edge HA Pair) | Fabric Billed Fabric VC | No |
Metal Billed Fabric VC | Fabric Billed Fabric VC | No |
Requesting a Fabric Billed Fabric Virtual Connection¶
To request a Fabric Virtual Connection, open the Project's Interconnections page. Click + Request New Interconnection.
In the Interconnection Type section, click the drop-down under Fabric VC, and select Fabric Billed.
- Select the location for the new connection from the drop-down. You will want to choose the metro where your Equinix Metal servers and VLANs live, or where you plan on provisioning them.
- Give a name to your connection.
- Choose whether you want a set of redundant ports. You get a primary port and a secondary port with a virtual circuit each to attach two VLANs to, giving you some amount of redundancy and high-availability.
- The Maximum Interconnection Speed is set to the default maximum of 10 Gbps. You will select the actual speed of the connection when you redeem your service token in the Fabric portal.
Next, you can pre-select the VLAN or VLANs that will be connected to your ports. The VLANs need to be in the same project and location as your Shared Ports. If you do not have any eligible VLANs, you can click + Create a VLAN to create them. Choosing VLANs is optional; you can wait and connect VLANs after your Shared Port is provisioned.
Review the summary of your request. Click Submit Request to receive your z-side service tokens.
Tokens expire in 7 days. You should also receive an email with your tokens and expiration information. On the Interconnections page, your newly requested Fabric Virtual Connection will be listed on the Pending Requests tab.
To request a connection through the API, send a POST
request to the /projects/{project_id}/connections
endpoint.
curl -X POST \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "X-Auth-Token: <API_TOKEN>" \
"https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/projects/{project_id}/connections" \
-d '{
"name": "<string>",
"description": "<string>",
"contact_email": "<string>",
"metro": "<metro_slug>",
"type": "shared",
"service_token_type": "z_side",
"redundancy": "redundant",
"vlans": [ <integer>, <integer> ]
}'
Request Fields
"name"
(required) - The name of your new Fabric Virtual Connection."description"
(optional) - A user-friendly description for your Fabric Virtual Connection."contact_email"
- The preferred email used for communication and notifications about the Interconnection. Required when using a Project API key. Optional and defaults to your user email address when using a User API key."metro"
(required) - The metro where the Fabric Virtual Connection lives."type"
(required) - To request a Fabric Virtual Connection - Fabric Billed, set to"shared"
. This reflects a naming convention that is backwards compatible with previous functionality."service_token_type"
(required) - This parameter is required when requesting a Fabric-to-Metal Shared Port. Set the value to"z_side"
."redundancy"
(required) - If you choose a redundant connection, you get a primary port and a secondary port to attach two VLANs to, giving you some amount of redundancy and high availability. Options are either“primary”
or“redundant”
."vlans"
(optional) - A list of VLAN IDs that will be used for the connection(s). The first one set will be used for the primary, and the second one set will be used for the secondary (if redundant). Choosing VLANs is optional; you can wait and connect VLANs after your Shared Port is provisioned.
Sending the request creates generates your z-side service tokens. The tokens are included in the response in the "service_tokens"
object. If you requested a redundant connection, you will receive two tokens.
"service_tokens": [
{
“id”: "ff0cf4dc-a897-426d-9621-14e5b985058f",
“role”: "primary",
“state”: "inactive",
“max_allowed_speed”: 10000000000,
“service_token_type”: "z_side",
“expires_at”: "2019-09-30T20:22:20",
}
],
Tokens expire in 7 days. You should also receive an email with your service tokens and expiration information. You can check on your request and retrieve the tokens during this window by sending a GET
request to the /connections/{connection_id}
endpoint.
curl -X GET -H 'X-Auth-Token: $API_TOKEN' \
"https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/connections/{connection_id}"
Redeeming the Z-side Service Token¶
To redeem your token, login to the Equinix Fabric portal and from the Connections drop-down menu, click Create a Connection.
Under Frequent Connections, select the Connect using a Service Token tile, and click Enter a Service Token.
In the dialog box, paste your token in the Enter Service Token field, and click Validate.
Verify that the details of the token are correct, and click Redeem to redeem your token and finish setting up yor connection to Fabric.
Legacy Connections - If you have previously used Shared Ports on Equinix Metal, then you may have used the Fabric Token field to redeem your token and set up your connection. If you have existing legacy connections, they will continue to work as expected. If you have unredeemed legacy tokens, it is no longer possible to redeem those tokens on Equinix Fabric. You will need to request new service tokens, and use the new steps to redeem them in Fabric.
Configuring the Origin¶
You can now continue setting up your connection in the Fabric portal. Since you redeemed a pre-configured service token, Equinix Metal will automatically be set as the destination for the connection and you will be choosing the origin.
First, select the location of the origin of the connection. This is most often a Virtual Device, but could also be one of your own Equinix Fabric ports. The virtual device or port can be in any metro.
If you are using a Virtual Device, select the device type and the connection type. Currently, Redundant Devices and Clusters are not supported.
On the Connection Details page, give your virtual connection a friendly name, specify which interfaces on the virtual device to connect with (if necessary), and specify a Purchase Order number if your organization requires it for billing purposes. The z-side VLAN is auto-assigned by the service token, and does not have to match your VLAN IDs on Equinix Metal.
Next, set the speed of the connection. Equinix Metal sets the maximum speed for Fabric Virtual Connections - Fabric Billed at 10 Gbps. Choose from the Fabric speed options and pricing.
The last page is a review, where you can review your choices and go back and make changes. When you are ready to place the order, click Submit Order. This initiates a connection setup process between Fabric and Equinix Metal in the background that can take up to 10 minutes to complete.
If you received two tokens for a redundant connection, be sure to repeat the process to redeem your second token.
If you need to retrieve the tokens, they are available in the Interconnection Request tab. Click Manage on the Interconnection that you want the tokens for.
Managing Fabric Virtual Connections¶
Once the Interconnection is established between Fabric and Equinix Metal, it will appear on your Project's Interconnections page, in the Fabric VC section, with Active as the status.
- Fabric Billed Fabric Virtual Connections have type Fabric Billed.
- Metal Billed Fabric Virtual Connections have type Metal Billed.
- Interconnections that were set up as Shared Ports are indicated with type Legacy.
Note that Dedicated Ports are managed at the organization level, so if there are any Dedicated Ports in your organization, they will also appear in the Dedicated Ports section.
Clicking on the Interconnection's name brings you to its Overview page, which contains a detail view as well as a summary of the primary port and secondary port configurations.
Clicking either Primary Port or Secondary Port pulls up the port's status and configuration.
To list all the Interconnections in a project, send a GET
request to the /projects/{project_id}/connections
endpoint. Note that Dedicated Ports are managed at the organization level, so if there are any Dedicated Ports in your organization, they will also appear in the response.
curl -X GET -H 'X-Auth-Token: <API_TOKEN>' \
https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/projects/{project_id}/connections
To get the details of a Fabric Billed Fabric VC, send a GET
request to the /connections/{connection_id}
endpoint, specifying the UUID in the request path.
curl -X GET -H 'X-Auth-Token: <API_TOKEN>' \
https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/connections/{connection_id}
You can use this information to manage and update the Fabric Billed Fabric VC by sending a PUT
request to the /connections/{connection_id}
endpoint. Specify what you want changed in the body of the request. You can modify the name, description, tags and contact email.
If you want to change the redundancy of the VC, updating redundancy to primary
will remove a secondary port, while updating to redundant
will add a secondary port.
curl -X PUT \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "X-Auth-Token: <API_TOKEN>" \
"https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/connections/{connection_id}" \
-d '{
"contact_email": "<string>",
"description": "<string>",
"name": "<string>",
"redundancy": "<string>",
"tags": [
"<string>"
]
}'
You can also get the port information of your Interconnections.
To get a list of a Fabric Billed Fabric VC's ports, send a GET
request to the /connections/{connection_id}/ports
endpoint.
curl -X GET -H 'X-Auth-Token: <API_TOKEN>' \
https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/connections/{connection_id}/ports
And to get one of the port's details, send a GET
request to the /connections/{connection_id}/ports/{id}
endpoint.
curl -X GET -H 'X-Auth-Token: <API_TOKEN>' \
https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/connections/{connection_id}/ports/{id}
Virtual Circuits¶
Each of your ports, primary and secondary, has a single virtual circuit that a VLAN can be attached to.
The relationship of virtual circuits to VLANs is 1:1. You can only attach one VLAN to one virtual circuit, and one virtual circuit to one VLAN. The same VLAN can't be connected to two or more virtual circuits. As a consequence, if you are designing for high-availability with Primary and Secondary ports, you will need a VLAN for each, and will need to have inter-vlan routing or some other layer-3 application awareness.
If you specified the VLANs you wanted connected to your ports' Virtual Circuits when you requested the virtual connection, they will be automatically added. If you did not specify any VLANs, your Virtual Circuits will have Waiting on customer VLAN as the status.
Attaching VLANs¶
To attach a VLAN to a Virtual Circuit, click Primary Port, under Virtual Circuits click Manage. From the Manage VLAN panel, select the VLAN you would like to attach.
Note that the VLAN must be in the same project and metro as the Fabric Virtual Connection. Click Update Virtual Circuit to attach the VLAN.
If you have a set of redundant ports, click Secondary Port and follow the same steps to associate a VLAN with the secondary port.
To get your Fabric Billed Fabric VC port's Virtual Circuit, send a GET
request to the /connections/{connection_id}/ports/{port_id}/virtual-circuits
endpoint.
curl -X GET -H 'X-Auth-Token: <API_TOKEN>' \
https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/connections/{connection_id}/ports/{port_id}/virtual-circuits
And to attach a VLAN to the Virtual Circuit, send a PUT
request to the /virtual-circuits/{id}
endpoint with the VLAN's "vnid"
specified in the body of the request.
curl -X PUT \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "X-Auth-Token: <API_TOKEN>" \
"https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/virtual-circuits/{id}" \
-d '{
"vnid": "<string>"
}'
Detaching VLANs¶
If you need to detach a VLAN from a port, select the Virtual Circuit, and click Unassociate VLAN from the Actions menu.
Deleting a Fabric Virtual Connection¶
Deleting a Fabric Virtual Connection is permanent. When you delete the connection, all attached VLANs will be detached, and traffic from Fabric to your servers will be cut off. Please be sure to stop traffic before deletion.
Note: if you delete a Fabric Billed Virtual Connection from the Equinix Metal side, it will be automatically deleted in the Fabric portal also. If you delete it from the Fabric portal, it will also be automatically cleaned up on Equinix Metal side.
From the list of connections on the Interconnections page, click the name of the Fabric Virtual Connection you want to delete.
Click Delete Interconnection to delete the Fabric Virtual Connection permanently.
To delete a Fabric Virtual Connection from the API, send a DELETE
request to the /connections/{connection_id}
endpoint, specifying the ID of the port in the path.
curl -X DELETE -H 'X-Auth-Token: <API_TOKEN>' \
https://api.equinix.com/metal/v1/connections/{id}
Sending the request will delete the connection permanently.