Metal Billed Fabric Virtual Connections¶
Metal Billed Fabric Virtual Connections allow you to make a Layer 2 virtual connection from Equinix Metal™ to other Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) on Fabric in the same metro, without the need for a Network Edge device. You will still need to have an account on the Equinix Fabric Portal in order to redeem the a-side service token, but you do not have to have an Equinix Fabric Billing account.
General Facts
- Each Virtual Fabric 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 Virtual Fabric Port comes with a single Virtual Circuit for you to attach to a VLAN to. If you are using a 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.
- Virtual Fabric Ports have a maximum bandwidth of 10 Gbps.
- Virtual Fabric Ports support up to a 9000 byte maximum transmission unit (MTU) and jumbo Ethernet frames.
Origins and Destinations
Origin | Destination | Supported |
---|---|---|
Metal Billed Fabric VC | Any physical port on Fabric (not on a Service Profile) | Yes |
Metal Billed Fabric VC | Any Layer 2 Service Profile on a physical Fabric port, generally a cloud service provider | Yes |
Metal Billed Fabric VC | Virtual Device (Network Edge) or Service Profile on a Virtual Device | No |
Metal Billed Fabric VC | Equinix Metal as the destination cloud service provider | No |
Bandwidth and Pricing¶
Metal Billed Fabric Virtual Connections usage charges are metered and billed by Equinix Metal, and will be included in your monthly invoices. All usage is hourly based, with a rate determined by the maximum speed you choose for the connection. Your options for maximum speed are:
- 50 Mbps
- 200 Mbps
- 500 Mbps
- 1 Gbps
- 2 Gbps
- 5 Gbps
- 10 Gbps
Note: you are choosing a maximum speed, because it's possible that the service provider you are connecting to has additional connection speed options. In the Fabric portal, you will be able to choose a speed up to the maximum speed you order through Equinix Metal.
Rates are published on the Fabric Pricing product page.
Requesting a Metal 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 Metal Billed.
- Select the location for the new connection from the drop-down. You will want to select the metro where both your Equinix Metal infrastructure lives and the metro where the CSP you are connecting to on Fabric is: these interconnections are metro-bound.
- Give a name to your connection.
- Choose whether you want a set of redundant ports. Redundant ports are highly recommended. Selecting a single port may result in significant downtime due to planned and unplanned outages.
- Set the connection speed by selecting it from the drop-down. Note: the speed cannot be changed after a service token is issued. A new request and service token is required to change the speed.
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 Fabric Virtual Connection. 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 Fabric Virtual Connection is provisioned.
Review the summary of your request. Click Submit Request to receive your a-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": "a_side",
"redundancy": "<redundant>",
"speed": "<string>",
"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) - Select the metro where both your Equinix Metal infrastructure and the CSP destination on Fabric is: these interconnections are metro-bound."type"
(required) - To request a Shared Port, set to"shared"
. CHECK"service_token_type"
(required) - The service token type for Fabric. Set the value to"a_side"
."redundancy"
(required) - Redundant ports are highly recommended. Selecting a single port may result in significant downtime due to planned and unplanned outages. Options are either“primary”
or“redundant”
."speed"
(optional) - Set the connection speed. Your options are"50mbps"
,"200mbps"
,"500mbps"
,"1gbps"
,"2gbps"
,5gbps
, or"10gbps"
. Note: the speed cannot be changed after a service token is issued. A new request and service token is required to change the speed."vlans"
(optional) - A list of VLAN IDs that will be attached to your port(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 Fabric Virtual Connection is provisioned.
A complete listing of fields is available in the API Reference.
Sending the request creates the Shared Port on Equinix Medal and generates your Fabric 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-9621-13e5b975058c",
“role”: "primary",
“state”: "inactive",
“max_allowed_speed”: 50000000,
“service_token_type”: "a_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 Your A-side Service Token¶
To redeem your token, login to the Equinix Fabric portal, and from the Connections drop-down menu, click Create a Connection.
Select the destination of the connection, which can be a cloud service provider such as AWS or Azure, or a Fabric port that you own. Equinix Metal as the destination is NOT supported.
If connecting to a cloud service provider, select A Service Provider and select the one you are looking for.
OR
If connecting to your own Fabric port, select My Own Assets and Connect My Assets as E-line.
Once you have selected your destination, use your service tokens to set Equinix Metal as the origin of the connection. Select Service Token and enter the token in the field. The origin port information will be automatically populated once you enter the token.
If you are connecting to a cloud service provider, they may offer redundancy options that allow you to redeem both tokens at once.
Otherwise you will have to repeat this process for each token.
OR
If you are connecting to your own Fabric port, the origin port information will also be automatically filtered, and you will be able to see your options for selecting your destination Fabric port.
The destination options will be filtered to the metro that you requested on Equinix Metal. Select the one you want to connect to, and click Next.
Give the connection's virtual circuit a friendly name, and enter any information that is required by the service provider that you are connecting to, like your AWS Account ID. Set the speed of the connection, up to the limit that was set on Equinix Metal.
Click Next to review your choices, and when you are ready to place the order, click Submit Order.
Note: After submitting the order, you may also have to log into the account that you use to manage the service provider you are connecting to, in order to approve the connection from Equinix Metal and Fabric.
Redeeming your a-side service token and setting up your connection in Fabric starts a background job on Equinix Metal to complete the setup and activation. This usually takes less than 15 minutes.
If you received two tokens for a redundant connection, and you were not able to redeem both tokens when connecting to the CSP, 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.
When you have redeemed your service token on Fabric and activation is complete, the hourly billing will begin.
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. Billing starts when the status becomes Active on the the Fabric Virtual Connection.
- 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 Metal 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 Metal 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 Metal 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 Metal 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.
Removing VLANs will not stop the usage charges and billing. To stop usages and billing, you would have to delete the Fabric Virtual Connection.
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, and ensure you clean up any resources associated to the connection from the destination CSP. Doing this before deleting the connection from the Metal or Fabric portal ensures the connection will be fully deleted and billing charges are stopped.
Note: if you delete a Metal 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. Usage/billing stops when the Metal Billed connection is deleted.