Recognize and interpret essential integration concepts and terminology20% of the exam
Virtualization, containers and system scalability
The compute and storage building blocks behind Mule deployments (virtual machines, bare-metal servers, containers on Kubernetes, replica disk and external object stores) and the principles of vertical and horizontal scaling, high availability clusters and load balancing.
Identify the types of virtualization, computing, and storage infrastructure required by enterprise systems and describe the principles of system scalability.
~7 min read · 3 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Identify the compute options enterprise systems run on: bare-metal servers, virtual machines and containers orchestrated by Kubernetes.
- Explain what a hypervisor does and tell block, file and object storage apart.
- Distinguish local, volatile storage on a runtime instance from external persistent storage such as an object store or persistent queue.
- Tell vertical scaling (a bigger node) from horizontal scaling (more nodes) and name the limits of each.
- Explain how a high availability cluster and a load balancer keep a service running when a node fails.
Key terms:
- Virtual machine (VM): a virtualized server, as opposed to a bare-metal server.
- Hypervisor: software installed on a host machine that provisions the resources to create and run virtual machines.
- Container: an isolated unit that runs one application's runtime; Kubernetes orchestrates many of them.
- Vertical scaling: adding cores or memory to one node (scale up).
- Horizontal scaling: adding nodes, replicas or workers that share the workload (scale out).
- High availability (HA) cluster: multiple nodes acting as a unit so that service continues when one fails.
Key facts
Runtime Fabric infrastructure
- Detail
- Customer-managed Kubernetes on AWS, Azure, VMs or bare metal
Hypervisor
- Detail
- Installed on a host machine; provisions and runs virtual machines
Container vs VM
- Detail
- Containers share the host OS and kernel; each VM has its own OS
Storage categories
- Detail
- Block (addressed chunks), file (hierarchy), object (flat, unique ID)
Runtime Fabric and Docker/Kubernetes
- Detail
- Older page: bundled; today's overview: you provide them; exam aligns to Spring '24
Runtime Fabric isolation
- Detail
- A separate Mule runtime server per application
CloudHub 2.0 isolation
- Detail
- Each replica runs in a separate container
CloudHub 2.0 vertical scaling
- Detail
- Choose a vCore size; minimum 8 GB storage per replica
CloudHub 2.0 local disk
- Detail
- Cleared on restart or redeploy; use Object Store v2 to persist
Persistent queue retention
- Detail
- Up to 4 days
Minimum Mule cluster
- Detail
- At least two Mule runtime engines on different machines
Active-active model
- Detail
- No primary server; any node takes over
Sources for this section (11)
- Deployment Optionsdocs.mulesoft.com (opens in a new tab)
- AWS Computetrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- AWS Container Servicestrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- AWS Storage Optionstrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Runtime Fabric Overviewdocs.mulesoft.com (opens in a new tab)
- Exam Guidehelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- CloudHub 2.0 Architecturedocs.mulesoft.com (opens in a new tab)
- CloudHub 2.0 Clusteringdocs.mulesoft.com (opens in a new tab)
- CloudHub HA featuresdocs.mulesoft.com (opens in a new tab)
- Mule HA clustersdocs.mulesoft.com (opens in a new tab)
- High availability clusterwww.mulesoft.com (opens in a new tab)
- Why can adding nodes slow down an application that relies heavily on Object Stores?
- When does a CloudHub 2.0 application need Object Store v2 instead of its local disk?
- How long can a message wait in a CloudHub persistent queue?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
Keep reading with the MuleSoft Integration Foundations pack
- Core concepts
- Exam traps
- Worked scenario
The pack includes:
- All 37 lessons of the MuleSoft Integration Foundations guide, with reading progress
- Interactive decision walks and step-by-step sequence steppers
- Practice exams purchase adds inline bank questions and topic practice (3 questions for this lesson)
- An official source cited for every claim
- An AI tutor that answers from the guide
- Choose guide-only, practice-only, or save $4 with both