MongoDB Atlas FAQ

MongoDB Atlas is a database as a service created by the experts who design and engineer MongoDB.

Launching an application on any database typically requires careful planning to ensure performance, high availability, security, and disaster recovery. For as long as you run your application, you have ongoing obligations that require deep expertise to continue to meet your operational goals. With MongoDB Atlas, most of this overhead goes away; Atlas provides all of the features of MongoDB while automating database administration tasks such as database configuration, infrastructure provisioning, patches, scaling events, backups, and more. This allows you to deliver applications or new features quickly, and focus on what matters most to you and your customers.

MongoDB Atlas is available across AWS, Azure, and GCP.

It is free to start with MongoDB Atlas for learning, prototyping, and early development. For dedicated clusters, MongoDB Atlas is billed hourly based on how much you use. The hourly rate depends on a number of factors, most importantly the size and number of servers you use. You will receive a single bill from MongoDB that explains your hourly use and backup fees.

For example, if you deploy on AWS a 3-node replica set of M40s and run it 24/7 for one month using the included 80GB of standard block storage, and you have exactly 80GB, your costs would be:

• Per server hourly cost¹: ~$0.34

• Total servers: 3

• Total hours: 720

• Backup data: 80GB @ $2.50/GB/month

• Total monthly fees paid to MongoDB: $946.79

MongoDB is one of the most scalable databases on the planet, and MongoDB Atlas brings you that same scalability, but with us managing it for you:

• You can scale up or down on larger instance types with no application downtime

• You can scale out across multiple instances with no application downtime using MongoDB’s native sharding capabilities

You can easily move an deployment to MongoDB Atlas with minimal impact to your application using the live migration feature in the application. Live migration works by keeping a cluster in MongoDB Atlas in sync with your source database until you’re ready to cut over.

You can also move small to medium size data sets with relatively little downtime using mongodump/mongorestore.

MongoDB Atlas automates infrastructure provisioning, setup, and deployment so your team can get the database resources they need, when they need them.

You are responsible for the following:

• Schema design

• Query and index optimization

• Server size selection - you must select the appropriate size of server, coupled with IO and storage capacity

• Capacity planning - you must determine when you need additional capacity, typically using the monitoring telemetry provided by MongoDB Atlas, but you can make these changes with no downtime

• Initiating database restores

You also have the flexibility to choose when to initiate major version upgrades, while patches and minor version upgrades are applied automatically.

No, we are not building data centers.

Instead, MongoDB Atlas runs on different cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, all of which provide extensive offerings in terms of data center location and SLAs. Initially we will support AWS, and are working to add support for other cloud platforms in the future.

You can choose from a range of instance sizes that are optimized for MongoDB. M10 and above are dedicated instances so you won't be impacted by “noisy neighbors.”

On Amazon Web Services

You can also select different EBS storage sizes as well as high-performance provisioned IOPS for predictable performance.

On Microsoft Azure

You can add storage capacity for your deployments. For deployments in Azure, storage speed is tied to storage capacity.

On Google Cloud Platform

You can add storage capacity for your deployments. For deployments in GCP, your disks get high performance IOPS provisioned automatically based on disk size.

MongoDB Atlas clusters are designed for resilience with a minimum three node replica set distributed across availability zones within a cloud region.

Self-Healing Clusters

If a primary node becomes unavailable, MongoDB Atlas will automatically perform a failover in seconds, with no need for manual intervention. For additional fault tolerance, configure secondary nodes across multiple regions in the unlikely event of a total region outage.

Uptime Guarantee

All MongoDB Atlas clusters are highly available and backed by an industry-leading uptime SLA of 99.995% across all cloud providers.

MongoDB offers fully managed backups of your data, including incremental data recovery and consistent, cluster-wide snapshots of sharded clusters.

Continuous Backup

MongoDB Atlas continuously backs up your data, ensuring your backups are just a few seconds behind the operational system. With continuous backup, you can restore to any point in time or query your snapshots to rapidly restore a subset of your data.

Continuous backups are charged separately from your MongoDB Atlas instances. Pricing ranges from $1.50 to $2.50 per GB/month, depending on snapshot frequency.

Cloud Provider Snapshots

MongoDB Atlas backs up your data using the native snapshot capabilities of the cloud provider. Your backups are stored in the same cloud region as your managed databases. Currently, this option supports databases deployed in Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Backups using cloud provider snapshots are charged separately from your MongoDB Atlas instances. Pricing varies by region.

MongoDB Atlas is security hardened by default.

Each MongoDB Atlas group is provisioned into its own VPC, thus isolating your data and underlying systems from other MongoDB Atlas users. Network encryption and access control are configured by default, and IP whitelists allow you to specify a specific range of IP addresses against which access will be granted. All security-specific updates to the database software and underlying instances are automatically applied by MongoDB engineers.

For deployments running in AWS, VPC Peering can be used to connect your application servers deployed to another AWS VPC directly to your MongoDB Atlas cluster using private IP addresses.

All storage volumes on AWS, Azure, and GCP are automatically encrypted.

Enterprise Security features can be enabled for your MongoDB Atlas clusters. They include the following:

• Bring your own key management service: Atlas supports the encrypted storage engine, a native encryption option for WiredTiger. With this option enabled, all database files are written to the filesystem encrypted and customers maintain control over the encryption keys for their fully managed clusters.

• Database-level auditing: For regulatory compliance, security administrators can use MongoDB Atlas to retrieve audit logs tracking DML, DDL, and DCL operations taken against a managed cluster.

• LDAP integration: Atlas offers integration with customer LDAP servers to simplify access control and granular permissions management for users and applications.

Read the MongoDB Atlas Security Controls white paper for more information about MongoDB Atlas security and data security.

MongoDB Atlas includes an integrated set of features for database monitoring and performance optimization, including:

• More than 100 metrics related to the database and the underlying infrastructure, including disk usage, active connections, operations, and disk IOPS, provided in optimized charts

• Real-time performance panel that displays current network traffic, database operations, and infrastructure statistics, and highlights the hottest collections and long-running queries

• Built-in Performance Advisor that monitors slow queries and provides index recommendations to optimize query performance

• Customizable alerts so you can react to anomalies

• Service Organization Control (SOC) Reports are independent third-party examination reports that demonstrate how the MongoDB Atlas service achieves key compliance controls and objectives. The purpose of these reports is to help you and your auditors understand the controls established to support operations and compliance.

  • MongoDB has completed its SOC 2 Type II report on MongoDB Atlas.

• MongoDB, Inc. is also certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield. View the certification here.

• For customers who are subject to the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, MongoDB Atlas supports HIPAA compliance and enables covered entities and their business associates to use a secure MongoDB Atlas environment to process, maintain, and store protected health information. MongoDB, Inc. will enter into Business Associate Agreements covering MongoDB Atlas with customers as necessary under HIPAA,

• MongoDB Atlas infrastructure runs on top of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform; each cloud provider undergoes its own series of independent third-party audits on a regular basis.

  • Learn more about cloud compliance on AWS

  • Learn more about cloud compliance on Microsoft Azure

  • Learn more about cloud compliance on Google Cloud Platform

Learn more about MongoDB Cloud Services Compliance.

MongoDB Atlas includes support for the cloud database platform and product usage inquiries including but not limited to database connectivity, data migration, guidance on product features, API implementation, billing and account issues, and more. Our teams will also take care of database maintenance with automated patches and bug fixes, and ensure that your databases are available (see our reliability SLA) and properly configured. If there are issues with the underlying infrastructure, we will work directly with the cloud vendors to resolve them.

When your account is created, you will have access to 30 days of free end to end support, which includes support for the database software. You may purchase Atlas Pro or Atlas Enterprise to extend access to end to end support from MongoDB Technical Services Engineers and gain additional benefits such as unlimited usage of premium features and additional software from MongoDB, Inc.

For more information about Atlas Pro or Atlas Enterprise, please contact us.