Preparing Your VM/Bare Metal Cluster for Runtime Fabric Installation | MuleSoft Documentation
# Preparing Your VM/Bare Metal Cluster for Runtime Fabric Installation
MuleSoft received customer feedback asking for rapid patching of high severity vulnerabilities in Kubernetes (K8s) and for MuleSoft to better leverage their existing K8s investments and operational practices. In response to this demand, MuleSoft partnered with industry-leading managed K8s platforms vendors such as AWS, Microsoft, Google and IBM. As a result, MuleSoft is proactively transitioning to deliver K8s to their customers via secure, highly available, and managed K8s platform from the above vendors and will stop investing in the black box approach of Runtime Fabric appliance in which you have found limited visibility and extensibility.
Runtime Fabric is compatible with AWS, Google, Microsoft, and IBM RedHat Openshift solutions that deliver faster and consistent security patches. These integrations enable you to easily leverage existing investments in the Kubernetes ecosystem.
Depending on your affinity to public clouds and in-house Kubernetes expertise, the following self-managed Red Hat OpenShift offerings can enable both on-premises and public cloud bare-metal solutions:
  * Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes engine (Entry level)
  * Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP)
  * Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus


After you use one of these solutions to set up K8s on the cluster, proceed to the Runtime Fabric installation section to set up Runtime Fabric as you would install on an AKS or EKS.
## Change for Appliance Users
Existing appliance utility users can migrate the licensed Core capacity currently allocated to a Runtime Fabric appliance deployment to any customer-hosted deployment option such as Runtime Fabric on public clouds, OpenShift, or Mule runtime standalone, subject to the total license limitations. Customers with Flexible Hybrid Deployment rights can also convert Cores to use vCores to utilize this capacity on CloudHub 2.0.
## Available Migration Options
  * If you are looking for an Integration Platform as a Service, Cloudhub 2.0 is the recommended offering. This Mulesoft flagship offering has the lowest operational overhead.
  * If you already have knowledge about public clouds and have some experience in managing a Kubernetes cluster, migrate to Runtime Fabric on public cloud Kubernetes clusters. The following clouds support Runtime Fabric:
    * Runtime Fabric on AWS Elastics Kubernetes Service
    * Runtime Fabric on AWS EKS-Anywhere
    * Runtime Fabric on Google Kubernetes Engine
    * Runtime Fabric on Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service
  * To standardize your own bare-metal solutions using public Kubernetes distributions, follow Runtime Fabric supported IBM Openshift offerings. These seven offerings include pre-built and certified assets, connectors, and operators, which enable both on-premises and public cloud bare-metal solutions.
  * Managed Cloud Services
    * Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA)
    * Azure Red Hat Openshift (ARO)
    * Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on GCP
    * Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud
  * Self-managed services
    * RedHat OpenShift Kubernetes engine (Entry level)
    * RedHat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP)
    * RedHat OpenShift Platform Plus
  * If you don’t have investments in Kubernetes and must stay in your own hosted environment, Mule runtime standalone is an available option. This deployment model has reduced runtime resiliency and heavy management overhead.


## Actions Appliance Users Can Take
Choose one of the previously mentioned options and migrate before the EOL deadlines.
Review the Product Versioning and Back Support Policy for more details on Standard Support, Extended Support, and EOL support.