MuleSoft Runtime Fabric A Short Overview

Runtime Fabric (RTF) is a container service to deploy Mule runtime on cloud (AWS/Azure) or on a data center (on-premises). It provides all cloud (PaaS) benefits, such as high availability, automatic failover and rolling upgrade. Based on Docker containers and Kubernetes for orchestration, RTF has been packaged/maintained in such a way that it requires very little or no knowledge of Docker to run.

You can deploy multiple versions of Mule Runtime using RTF, and it helps you achieve consistency, portability with the support of container service and horizontal scalability. You can deploy an API/integration solution across many platforms, including AWS, Azure or on-premises data centers. Runtime Fabric automates the deployment and orchestration of the Mule application and API gateway. 

RFT includes all the components required to run the Mule application. You can manage it from the AnyTime Platform (control plane). It provides the same feature as Cudhub with added the benefits of deployment on AWS/Azure.

Cloudhub: MuleSoft manages the Runtime infrastructure for your application deployment.

Runtime Fabric: Customer-managed infrastructure for Runtime deployment has the same features as Cloudhub, with more flexibility to choose your own infrastrcture.

The application scales horizontally with multiple instances running. An internal load balancer is available that helps balance the load across all running instances. When deploying the application to Runtime Fabric, it provides the option to select the Runtime version, number of replicas, vCPU and memory.  

Runtime Fabric architecture 

Runtime Fabric is a collection of virtual machines (VMs) that work together to form a cluster. Each VM in the cluster serves as either a “Controller” node or a “Worker” node.

The Controller node is a dedicated VM for managing the Runtime Fabric, load balancing, orchestration service and a distributed database. Worker nodes are the dedicated VMs used to run the Mule application and API gateways. You can have multiple controllers and workers to achieve high availability and fault tolerance.

Runtime Fabric offers two deployment types:

• Development 
• Production  

These deployment options differ in the number of required controller/worker nodes.  Only the controller runs the internal load balancer and agent to connect with the “Control Plane.” 

The recommended number of controller nodes for development and production are as follows: 

• Production — 3
• Development — 1

The recommended number of worker nodes for development and production are as follows: 

• Production — 3
• Development — 2

Runtime Fabric supports a maximum of five (5) controller nodes and 16 worker nodes. The external TCP load balancer can be configured to manage the load across multiple internal load balancers.

Here’s what a typical production setup for Runtime Fabric looks like:

Runtime Fabric installation has the following system requirements:

Reference: https://docs.mulesoft.com/runtime-fabric/1.4/

— By Vikas Mishra