Prevent cluster from being disabled due to inactivity period

I logged-in to my mongoDB account after many months and found that my free-tier clusters had to be re-enabled because of 0 activity.
Questions :
1 a. How do I stop mongoDB from disabling my cluster due to prolonged periods of inactivity ?
1 b. Does paying for a premium cluster help ?
2. It says that its pay-as-you-go ? Like AWS or a certain minimum monthly amount ? I have my billing details at AWS because its like less than $1 per month or so as its all test / small projects so I don’t mind my CC getting charged when a spike occurs. But having mongoDB charge me a flat $20 a month even for next-to-zero traffic then it’s expensive.

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Hi @anjanesh,

“Automatic Pause of Idle Clusters” is expected behaviour as per Atlas M0 (Free Cluster) Limitations:

Clusters Atlas automatically pauses M0 free clusters after 60 days of inactivity where there are zero connections to the cluster. You can resume the cluster at any time.

You will receive email warning before a cluster is paused. For example, 7 days before pausing an email with subject “Your MongoDB Atlas M0 cluster will be automatically paused in 7 days” and links to the Atlas organisation and project will be sent:

Hi Stennie,

Your M0 free tier cluster, Cluster0, has been idle since 2021/09/21.

MongoDB Atlas will automatically pause this cluster after 60 days of inactivity, at 7:19 AM AEDT on 2021/11/20.

To prevent this cluster from being paused, initiate a connection to your cluster before 2021/11/20. View our documentation for instructions on how to connect to your cluster.

After your cluster is paused you will get email confirmation (“Your MongoDB Atlas M0 cluster has been automatically paused due to prolonged inactivity”):

Hi Stennie,

Your M0 free tier cluster, Cluster0, was automatically paused at 8:36 AM AEDT on 2021/11/20 due to prolonged inactivity.

All of your cluster data has been retained. You may resume your cluster at any time by visiting the Atlas UI. For more details on paused clusters, view our documentation.

Per the notifications, your M0 cluster can be resumed at any time.

Sure, if you would prefer to pay for idle resources that is an option. The easier alternative would be to occasionally connect to your free clusters so they are not idle for extended periods of time, although the more environmentally friendly option would be to resume idle clusters only when needed.

Atlas has two types of clusters available:

  • Cluster tiers based on resource allocation of storage, RAM, and CPU (free, shared, or dedicated).

  • A new Atlas Serverless option (currently in Preview) where you pay based on resource usage. This is intended for applications with low or variable traffic.

For more details see Atlas Pricing.

Regards,
Stennie

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This is very good news, thank you.

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