Mule Runtime Fabric (RTF) is a containerized, isolated, and highly available runtime for Mule applications and APIs that can be deployed on a variety of infrastructures, including on-premises data centers and private cloud environments. It essentially extends MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform to allow organizations to host their Mule applications on self-managed infrastructure while still leveraging cloud-based management and control plane capabilities.
At its core, Runtime Fabric offers a robust and scalable environment for deploying and managing Mule applications, providing the benefits of containerization and orchestration without requiring deep expertise in underlying technologies like Kubernetes.
Key Features and Benefits
Mule Runtime Fabric provides significant advantages for organizations looking to modernize their integration infrastructure:
- Containerized Isolation: Each Mule application runs in its own isolated container, preventing conflicts and ensuring consistent performance.
- High Availability and Scalability: RTF automatically distributes applications across multiple nodes and restarts failed instances, ensuring continuous operation. It can also scale applications horizontally to handle increased load.
- Automated Management: MuleSoft provides the Runtime Fabric agent, Mule runtime engine, and other dependencies to simplify application deployment. The Runtime Fabric agent plays a crucial role by deploying and managing Mule applications through the generation and updating of essential Kubernetes resources, such as deployments, pods, ReplicaSets, and ingress resources. This automation streamlines operations and reduces manual effort.
- Centralized Control: While applications run on your infrastructure, they are managed through the Anypoint Platform control plane, offering a unified view and management experience.
- Hybrid Deployment Flexibility: It bridges the gap between on-premises systems and cloud services, enabling a truly hybrid integration architecture.
- Enhanced Security: RTF provides network isolation and allows organizations to maintain strict control over their data and infrastructure, crucial for compliance and security requirements.
- Efficient Resource Utilization: By leveraging container orchestration, RTF optimizes the use of underlying hardware resources.
How Runtime Fabric Works
Runtime Fabric leverages Kubernetes, an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. When you deploy a Mule application to Runtime Fabric:
- The Anypoint Platform sends the deployment instructions to the Runtime Fabric agent running on your infrastructure.
- The Runtime Fabric agent translates these instructions into Kubernetes-native resources. It generates and updates Kubernetes resources like:
- Deployments: Define how your application should run (e.g., number of replicas).
- Pods: The smallest deployable units in Kubernetes, containing your Mule application container.
- ReplicaSets: Ensure a specified number of pod replicas are running at any given time.
- Ingress Resources: Manage external access to the services within the cluster.
- Kubernetes then orchestrates the deployment, scaling, and management of these resources across the cluster nodes.
- MuleSoft also provides the Mule runtime engine and other necessary dependencies, all bundled as containers, to ensure a complete and consistent execution environment for your applications.
This abstraction means that developers and operations teams can focus on their Mule applications without needing to become Kubernetes experts.
Deployment Options
Runtime Fabric offers flexibility in where it can be deployed, catering to various organizational needs and existing infrastructure.
| Deployment Type | Description | Ideal Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| On-Premises | Deployed directly on your own hardware within your data center. This option provides maximum control over the environment and is suitable for organizations with strict compliance requirements or existing significant on-premises investments. | Organizations with strict data residency requirements, existing private cloud infrastructure, or specific security policies. |
| Private Cloud | Deployed on private cloud platforms like VMware vSphere, OpenShift, or other Kubernetes-based private cloud offerings. This leverages the benefits of cloud-like scalability and automation within a private, controlled environment. | Companies leveraging private cloud strategies, seeking cloud-native benefits within their own network boundaries. |
| Public Cloud (BYOK) | While RTF is primarily for private environments, it can technically be deployed on public cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS EC2, Azure VMs, Google Cloud Compute Engine) by bringing your own Kubernetes cluster. This offers the benefits of public cloud infrastructure combined with the RTF features. (Note: MuleSoft also offers CloudHub 2.0 for fully managed public cloud deployments). | Organizations wanting the benefits of RTF within a public cloud provider they manage themselves. |
Practical Use Cases
- Hybrid Integration: Connects on-premises systems (e.g., ERP, databases) with cloud-based applications (e.g., Salesforce, Workday) securely and efficiently.
- Data Locality and Compliance: For industries with strict data residency requirements (e.g., financial services, healthcare), RTF allows applications processing sensitive data to run within the organization's controlled network.
- Modernizing Legacy Systems: Acts as an integration layer that exposes legacy system data and functionality as APIs, enabling agile development without migrating core systems.
- Edge Computing: Deploying integration runtimes closer to data sources at the edge of the network to reduce latency and improve processing efficiency.
- Disaster Recovery: Its high-availability design supports robust disaster recovery strategies for critical integration applications.
In essence, Mule Runtime Fabric empowers organizations to achieve greater flexibility and control over their Mule application deployments, balancing the agility of cloud-native architectures with the specific needs of their private infrastructure.
