"What Is" Series
stevemarturned me onto Equinix's "What is?" series where each article explores a new technology or topic. For example, you may know what iPXE is but did you know that Equinix actually boots up iPXE for every supported operating system of ours? There's a lot to learn, so give these a read. I'll add some of them below: What is an API https://deploy.equinix.com/developers/guides/what-is-api What is Colocation https://deploy.equinix.com/developers/guides/what-is-colocation What is iPXE https://deploy.equinix.com/developers/guides/what-is-ipxe/ What is Kubernetes https://deploy.equinix.com/developers/guides/what-is-kubernetes What is NVMe https://deploy.equinix.com/developers/guides/what-is-nvmeWhat's the difference between Playground, Sandbox, and Production?
You might be deploying on Network Edgetoday to run through Charles_Randall's tutorial. While reading up on Network Edge atDeveloper Platform, then perhaps you're thinking "what's the difference between Playground, Sandbox, and Production?". In short: Playground is a test environment to test Equinix APIs, using static data without integrating within the actual API. Sandbox is a mock test environmentto test Equinix APIs, using synthetic data (not production data)to integrate with Equinix APIs before moving to Production. Production is the live environment.What is Equinix's Learning Center?
Equinix's Learning Center are tutorials and walkthroughs about Equinix's products and services. You can search by category, articles, videos, difficulty (beginner, intermediate, advanced), and more. Need to learn about Equinix Interconnection? We got you! Need to learn how to load custom iPXE operating systems? We go you! After browsing Learning Center then you can come back here and ask questions on Community/Learn. So go search for tutorials on Learning Center, and then connect here with like-minded people towards your goals.How to Open a Support Case in the Equinix Customer Portal
In this video, we'll show you how to open a Support Case in the Equinix Customer Portal. In under a minute, you'll learn where the Support Icon is located, how to fill out the Support Case form, and where to track your Support Case after it's submitted. Head to the Equinix Customer Portal if you'd like to submit a Support Case: https://customerportal.equinix.com/
Intro to IAM - Users and Roles:
Users and Roles Administrators will need to assignroles to their users to perform tasks across the various Equinix Portals. If you'd prefer to watch along, here's a quick video demonstrating how to assign and remove roles from users in the IAM Portal: Navigate to the lefthand side of the screen to jump between various equinix portals in the menu. around the middle of the page under "Company Management", click on "Identity and Access Management" here we can manage users and roles Users Usersrepresent individuals allowed to log in to Equinix portals. Assign users to organizations and projects and grant them access to select assets based on predefined or custom roles. Roles Roles Roles are sets of permissions that grant the ability for users to do things like order new digital services like Equinix Fabric Ports or Network Edge Devices, Create Virtual Connections, or edit existing services. Use the Equinix Customer Portal to manage user access to product assets that haven't been onboarded to Identity and Access Management. Note:You will see a list of users who have been assigned a role in the selected project/organization. However, you can search for users that have not been assigned any role in the selected context by searching for First Name/Last Name or username of the user. (you can also search for a user in a different organization within the samerootOrg by searching for the exact username of that user.) Hopefully this discussion post and the video primer helped you get a handle on assigning and removing roles from users, and how to think about how administrators might go about creating sets of custom roles. With all of the administrative stuff out of the way, in these next posts we'll take a look at how a new user would place their first digital services order. Reference Documentation: Equinix Product Documentation Equinix Fabric Equinix Network Edge About Identity and Access Management (equinix.com)
Intro to IAM - Resources
Welcome to Equinix! This discussion post is the first in a short series that I think might help you hit the ground running as you begin your digital transformation journey. Before we get too much further, let’s establish some IAM terminology that we’ll be using a lot in the sections to follow. If you'd prefer to watch along, here's a spotlight video onIAM and here's ashort primer on Resources, Projects, and Organizations Benefits and Features of IAM Our robust IAM framework simplifies access for employees and customers through single credentials and secure authentication, and provides several other benefits: Greater security - Streamlined digital identities reduce risk and exposure to threats like data breaches and phishing. Centralized control -Role-based access control (RBAC) allows for centralized management of authentication and access rules. Regulatory compliance - Enhanced visibility and control help meet regulatory requirements. Customer Resource Hierarchy (CRH)– View and manage the structure of organizations, projects and resources. Access Management (AM)– Add users and grant access to the user in a given resource. Create custom roles that suit your internal organization setup. Identity Management – Manage your access and security settings. Link your accounts and switch between them without having to re-login. Resources Resources, (also known as Assets), are the building blocks that reflect your organization. These include different types of organizations, projects, connections, and virtual devices. Customers can create organizations, projects, and manage billing account assignment to build a resource hierarchy that feels familiar and matches the setup and operations of their organization. Every node in the customer resource hierarchy is a resource which can be accessed and controlled using IAM. A digital resource such as a Fabric port or Virtual connection would be a leaf node in the resource hierarchy and would also be referred to as an asset. Organizations Organizations allow you to model your resource hierarchy so that it matches your actual organizational setup. Organizations can also serve as parent nodes for other organizations or for projects. Projects Projects enable the convenient assignment and management of assets required for your end-customer or internal project's needs. In this example, the reseller has created separate organizations and projects for their end-customers. Each project entity has been assigned a set of product specific assets required to carry out a given end-customer commitment. Default Projects A default project is created by the system whenever a new first level organization is created. Default projects belong under the first level organization and are immutable, which means this organization can’t be deleted, renamed, or moved anywhere in the resource hierarchy. Projects A project is an entity within the customers resource hierarchy, A project is used to group multiple digital assets so that they can manage access rights to users spanning multiple projects. Projects are the second to last node in the resource hierarchy and are also parent of all digital assets. In the example shown above, the Resources/Assets (shown in yellow) are nested inside the Projects (shown in orange), which then fall under two Organizations (shown in red).User Access User Access Users assigned to an organization automaticallyinherit access to organizations and projects nested under the given organization node. This applies to existing organizations and projects as well as future organizations and projects created under this organization. Changes in role assignments on a specific hierarchy level are also reflected in the underlying organizations and projects. In the example Organization above, Joe has been assigned to the "Moonshot International" organization. Through inheritance, he can access all organizations and projects nested under the Moonshot International organization. Joe has also been explicitly assigned to the Nucleus project. Here are some things to consider when an organization or project is moved under a new parent organization: Users explicitly assigned to the organization or project will still be able to access it, and organizations and projects nested under it, after it's moved to a new target organization. Users that inherited access to it from the current parent organization, will no longer be able to access the organization or project. Users that have access to the new parent organization, by being explicitly assigned to it or through inheritance, will gain access to the organization or project being moved. Hopefully this discussion post and the video primers provided helped paint a picture of how customers are structuring their Organizations using IAM and got familiar with some of the "building blocks" in the Equinix IAM Portal. Next time we'll take a look at users and roles! Reference Documentation: Equinix Product Documentation Equinix Fabric Equinix Network Edge About Identity and Access Management (equinix.com)Ordering a Network Edge Device for first-time users
In this video, we'll show first-time users how to order and provision a Network Edge device. This step-by-step demo is perfect for users who'd like to provision their first device. We start by covering how to generate a public and private ssh key using PuTTY Keygen. Then we head to the Fabric Portal to create a new Network Edge device. We take you through Licensing and Device Resource selection, completing the Device Details and Additional Services section before showing you how to create a new Access Control List. After the new device is submitted and provisioned, we'll show you how to locate it in your device inventory and then how to connect your device with the public IP address and private SSH key in PuTTY. Finally, we'll show you how to open up a new console session and connect with your device using the provided password.
