Ordering your First Fabric Port

In my first two discussion posts (which can be found here and here) we painted a picture of how an Administrator might structure their organization operationally and explained Users, Resources, Projects, Organizations, and all of the other nuts and bolts that make up our IAM System.

We then went on to showcase deploying a Network Edge Device in the Equinix Fabric Portal, and talked about all the things a user ought to consider while preparing for their first deployment.

Here's a quick rundown of everything you'll need to know and/or have from an operational standpoint to start ordering Fabric Ports

Checklist 

Before ordering your first Fabric Port, here are a few things to complete, consider, and have handy:

• Customer Supplied Details - Everything that you as the customer will determine, such as the port speed, interface type, TPID, etc... as well as details like Patch Panel and Cage information where the Fabric Port services will be connected to and "delivered". In the case of a Remote Port this would also include the provider supplied LOA. Here you can find a list of metros and what speeds they support.
• User Account – A user account with the appropriate roles to order said Fabric Port, in this case "Fabric Port Manager". 
• High Availability - Fabric comes in a variety of flavors, including Primary and Secondary Ports. If high availability and resiliency are important to you, consider deploying a redundant pair for maximum resiliency.
  
  

Here I've included a short video demonstrating how to add the "Fabric Port Manager" role:

Ready to Order?

If you feel prepared to place your first Fabric Port order and you'd like to watch along, here's a video in which I've gone through ordering Fabric Port

and two more in which I've discussed ordering Remote Ports.

Hopefully this discussion post and the included video primers were able to help you get your organization's first Fabric Port order submitted! As always please feel free to leave any comments or questions down below!

Reference Documentation:

Equinix Product Documentation

Equinix Fabric

Equinix Network Edge

About Identity and Access Management (equinix.com)