Equinix Metal Guide: Deploying ESXi hosts
Once you have access to your Equinix environment, the desired likely first step is deploy ESXi on baremetal servers. With that being said, it is advisable to deploy a jump host in the environment (or preferably a VPN configuration) to easily be able to access internal networking. While baremetal deployment initially start with public, routable IP address to make it easy to start--it is extremely important to not rely on this for day-to-day management.
Equinix has simple instructions for VPN setup such as Wireguard here: https://metal.equinix.com/developers...ith-wireguard/
Once you have internal access to networking, you can begin ESXi server provisioning.
Video Demo
Deploy ESXi on Metal
The number/size of hosts is up to you--the benefit here is that you can easily add or remove compute as you need it. Since it is pay-as-you-go (though they have a variety of charge models) it is best to deploy what you need right now, and add to it as desired.
Click on Servers then + New Servers:
 |
Select the type of deployment (on-demand etc.)
 |
Choose a datacenter:
 |
Choose a size:
 |
Then choose ESXi:
 |
Make sure the VMware box is highlighted in blue (click it if it is not). Next choose the number of servers and provide a host name for each.
 |
You can choose optional configurations, such as additional IPs for custom cloudinit scripts to run, but defaults will work. Ensure the appropriate keys are added, by default all will be. I will select our project key and a personal key (you must at least choose one personal key).
 |
Confirm the configuration and click deploy. The process to deploy takes ~10-15 minutes at the time of this writing.
 |
You can see the metal being deployed in the Servers screen:
 |
Furthermore, you can click on the clock icon to see the specific progress, once complete you will be able to see and access the server configuration details.
 |
 |