Forum Discussion

Jantzen's avatar
Jantzen
Community Manager
2 years ago

What operating systems does Metal support?

What operating systems does Equinix Metal support?

  • As of October 2024, Equinix Metal supports a range of operating systems , including:

    • AlmaLinux
    • Alpine Linux
    • Debian
    • Flatcar Linux
    • FreeBSD
    • Nutanix
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    • Rocky Linux
    • Ubuntu
    • VMware Cloud Foundation
    • VyOS
    • Windows Server


    If we do not offer an operating system or a version of an operating system that meets your use-case, you can bring your own OS images using Custom iPXE.

    Licensed operating systems may require that you bring your own license, or are provided with an extra per-hour and sometimes also a per-core fee.

    All of our operating system images go through a validation process in order to be provisionable on our server plans. Not all operating systems are available on every server.

    Which operating systems are available on a specific server is listed on its product page and on the OS Compatibility page.

  • Jantzen's avatar
    Jantzen
    Community Manager

    As of April 2023, Equinix Metal supports a wide range of operating systems, including:

    • AlmaLinux
    • Alpine Linux
    • CentOS
    • Debian
    • Flatcar Linux
    • FreeBSD
    • NixOS
    • Nutanix
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    • Talos
    • Ubuntu
    • VMware ESXi
    • VMware NSX
    • Windows Server

    Equinix Metal also supports custom operating systems, giving users the flexibility to deploy their own preferred OS images if they so choose.

    In addition to these operating systems, Equinix Metal provides access to a variety of pre-built images that are optimized for different workloads, such as databases, web servers, and container runtimes. This makes it easy to deploy servers with pre-configured software and settings, reducing the time and effort required to get up and running.

    More information can be found on our Supported Operating System Images docs page

  • evielmetti's avatar
    evielmetti
    Equinix Employee

    As of October 2024, Equinix Metal supports a range of operating systems , including:

    • AlmaLinux
    • Alpine Linux
    • Debian
    • Flatcar Linux
    • FreeBSD
    • Nutanix
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    • Rocky Linux
    • Ubuntu
    • VMware Cloud Foundation
    • VyOS
    • Windows Server


    If we do not offer an operating system or a version of an operating system that meets your use-case, you can bring your own OS images using Custom iPXE.

    Licensed operating systems may require that you bring your own license, or are provided with an extra per-hour and sometimes also a per-core fee.

    All of our operating system images go through a validation process in order to be provisionable on our server plans. Not all operating systems are available on every server.

    Which operating systems are available on a specific server is listed on its product page and on the OS Compatibility page.