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Configure Online Archive

On this page

  • Overview
  • Required Access
  • Configure Online Archive Through the Atlas CLI
  • Configure Online Archive Through the API
  • Configure Online Archive Through the User Interface
  • Limitations

Important

Feature unavailable in Serverless Instances

Serverless instances don't support this feature at this time. To learn more, see Serverless Instance Limitations.

You can configure data in a collection to be archived by specifying an archiving rule. The archiving rule for a:

  • Time series collection is a combination of a time that is used to determine when to archive data and a numeric value representing the number of days that the Atlas cluster stores the data.

  • Standard collection can be one of the following:

    • A combination of a date that is used to determine when to archive data and a numeric value representing the number of days that the Atlas cluster stores the data.

    • A custom query that is used to select the documents to archive.

To configure your Atlas cluster for online archive:

  1. Create an archiving rule by providing the collection namespace and the criteria for selecting data to archive in the collection.

  2. (Optional) Specify commonly queried fields to partition archived data.

When you configure an Online Archive on your cluster, Atlas creates 2 federated database instances on your cluster for your archive only and for your cluster and archive.

To create an Online Archive, you must have Project Data Access Admin access or higher to the project.

To watch for an archive to be available, you must have Project Read Only access or higher to the project.

Note

Online archive doesn't archive data below the size of 5 MiB after 7 days. For 7 days immediately after Atlas creates an archive, Atlas archives all data. After 7 days, Atlas archives data only when your data size reaches 5 MiB.

To create an online archive for a cluster using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas clusters onlineArchives create [options]

To watch for a specific online archive to become available using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas clusters onlineArchives watch <archiveId> [options]

To learn more about the syntax and parameters for the previous commands, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas clusters onlineArchives create and atlas clusters onlineArchives watch.

Tip

See: Related Links

Note

Online archive doesn't archive data below the size of 5 MiB after 7 days. For 7 days immediately after Atlas creates an archive, Atlas archives all data. After 7 days, Atlas archives data only when your data size reaches 5 MiB.

To configure an online archive from the API, send a POST request to the onlineArchives endpoint.

Note

If you use the DATE criteria, you must specify the date field as part of the partition keys.

If the cluster already has an Active online archive with the same archiving rule for the same database and collection, the operation will fail. However, if the existing online archive is in Paused or Deleted state, the new online archive is created and its status is set to Active. To learn more about the syntax and options, see API.

Note

Online archive doesn't archive data below the size of 5 MiB after 7 days. For 7 days immediately after Atlas creates an archive, Atlas archives all data. After 7 days, Atlas archives data only when your data size reaches 5 MiB.

To configure an online archive, in your Atlas UI:

1
  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your desired project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. If the Clusters page is not already displayed, click Database in the sidebar.

    The Clusters page displays.

2
  1. Click your cluster's name.

  2. Click the Online Archive tab.

    The Online Archive page displays.

3

To configure an online archive for your collection, click:

  • Configure Online Archive button the first time.

  • Add Archive button subsequently.

4
5
  1. Specify the collection namespace, which includes the database name, the dot (.) separator, and the collection name (that is, <database>.<collection>), in the Namespace field.

    You can't modify the namespace once the online archive is created.

  2. Select the cloud provider region where you want to store your archived data.

    Tip

    We recommend that you select the same region as your cluster if possible because you might incur higher data transfer cost if you choose a different region.

    Atlas displays the cloud provider regions based on the cloud provider where your cluster is deployed. For multi-cloud clusters, Atlas displays the cloud provider regions of the highest priority provider. Atlas displays a next to the region that closely or exactly matches the region where your cluster is deployed.

    For Atlas clusters deployed on AWS, you can select one of the following regions:

    Data Federation Regions
    AWS Regions
    Virginia, USA
    us-east-1
    Oregon, USA
    us-west-2
    Sao Paulo, Brazil
    sa-east-1
    Ireland
    eu-west-1
    London, England
    eu-west-2
    Frankfurt, Germany
    eu-central-1
    Tokyo, Japan
    ap-northeast-1
    Mumbai, India
    ap-south-1
    Singapore
    ap-southeast-1
    Sydney, Australia
    ap-southeast-2
    Montreal, Canada
    ca-central-1

    For Atlas clusters deployed on Azure, you can select an Azure region only if there are no other Online Archives on the cluster that are using a different cloud provider. If an existing Online Archive on the cluster uses AWS or Google Cloud for storing archived data, you can only select AWS or Google Cloud regions for any new Online Archives on that cluster.

    Note

    For a cluster deployed on Azure, if you have existing Online Archives that use AWS or Google Cloud and you delete them, you must wait five days before you can create a new Online Archive that uses Azure. Within this five-day period, any attempts to create a new Online Archive still default to the cloud provider that you originally selected.

    For Atlas clusters deployed on Azure, you can select one of the following regions:

    Data Federation Regions
    Azure Regions
    Virginia, USA
    US_EAST_2
    Netherlands
    EUROPE_WEST

    For Atlas clusters deployed on Google Cloud, you can select a Google Cloud region only if there are no other Online Archives on the cluster that are using a different cloud provider. If an existing Online Archive on the cluster uses AWS or Azure for storing archived data, you can only select AWS or Azure regions for any new Online Archives on that cluster.

    Note

    For a cluster deployed on Google Cloud, if you have existing Online Archives that use AWS or Azure and you delete them, you must wait five days before you can create a new Online Archive that uses Google Cloud. Within this five-day period, any attempts to create a new Online Archive still default to the cloud provider that you originally selected.

    For Atlas clusters deployed on Google Cloud, you can select one of the following regions:

    Data Federation Regions
    Google Cloud Regions
    Belgium
    europe-west1
    Iowa, USA
    us-central1

    Note

    Once Atlas creates the online archive, you can't modify the storage region.

  3. Specify the criteria for selecting documents to archive for the type of collection you want to archive.

    For a standard collection, specify the criteria for selecting documents to archive under the Date Match or Custom Criteria tab in the Atlas User Interface.

    To select documents from the collection using a combination of a date field and number of days:

    • Specify an already indexed date field from the documents in the collection. To specify a nested field, use the dot notation.

    • Specify the number of days to keep the data in the Atlas cluster.

    • Choose the date format of the specified date field.

      If you choose any of the following formats, the value of specified date field must be the BSON type long:

      • EPOCH_SECONDS

      • EPOCH_MILLIS

      • EPOCH_NANOSECONDS

      Important

      You can't modify the date field once the online archive is created.

    To select documents from the collection using a custom filter, specify a valid JSON filter to run. Atlas uses the specified custom filter with the db.collection.find(filter) command. You can't use the empty document argument ({}) to return all documents. You can use MongoDB Atlas operators such as $expr to take advantage of all of the aggregation operators as shown in the following examples.

    Note

    The following examples assume that all documents include bucket_end_date fields with datetime values. In the following examples, Atlas archives all documents that don't include a bucket_end_date field and all documents where the bucket_end_date is not a datetime value.

    Example

    In this custom filter example, when the current date exceeds the date in the bucket_end_date field in the documents, Atlas subtracts thirty days (specified in milliseconds) from the current date and then archives data after that many days, hours, and minutes.

    {
    "$expr": { "$lte": [
    "$bucket_end_date",
    { "$subtract": [ "$$NOW", 2592000000 ] }
    ] }
    }

    In this custom filter example, when the current date exceeds the date inside an objectId, Atlas subtracts thirty days (specified in milliseconds) from the current date and then archives data after that many days, hours, and minutes.

    {
    "$expr": {
    "$lte": [
    {"$toDate": "$_id"},
    { "$subtract": [ "$$NOW", 2592000000 ] }
    ]
    }
    }

    If you use $expr in the custom filter, sometimes the Atlas cluster might be unable to use an index for archiving data.

    Note

    $NOW is only supported on Atlas clusters running MongoDB 4.2 or later.

    To archive documents in a time series collection, select the This is a Time-Series Collection checkbox and specify the following:

    • Name of the field which contains the date in each time series document. This must correspond to the timeField in the time series collection. To specify a nested field, use the dot notation. You can't modify the time field once the online archive is created.

    • Number of days to keep the data in the Atlas cluster.

    • Date format of the specified date field. The date field value must be in ISODate format.

    Note

    Atlas runs an index sufficiency query to determine the efficiency of the archival process. If the number of documents scanned to the number of documents returned is 10 or more, the query result triggers an Index Sufficiency Warning. This warning indicates that you have insufficient indexes for an efficient archival process. For date-based archives, you must index the date field. For custom criteria that use an expression, Atlas might first convert a value before it evaluates it against the query.

6
  1. (Optional) Specify a Deletion Age Limit.

    By default, Atlas doesn't delete archived data. However, if you specify the Deletion Age Limit, you can specify between 7 to 9125 days (25 years) to keep archived data. Atlas deletes archived data after the number of days you specify here. This data expiration rule takes effect 24 hours after you set the Deletion Age Limit.

    Warning

    Once Atlas deletes the data, you can't recover the data.

  2. (Optional) Specify a Schedule Archiving Window.

    By default, Atlas periodically runs a query to archive data. However, you can toggle the Schedule Archiving Window to explicitly schedule the time window during which you want Atlas to archive data. You can specify the following:

    • Frequency. You can choose to run the job every day, on a specific day of the week, or on a specific date every month. If you wish to schedule the data archiving job on the 29th, 30th, or 31st of every month, Atlas doesn't run the archiving job for months without these dates (for example, February).

    • Time window, in hours. Select the period of time during which you want Atlas to run the data archiving job. You must specify a minimum of two hours. If a running job doesn't complete during the specified time window, Atlas continues to run the job until it completes.

7
8

Note

Archive must have at least one partition field.

Enter up to two most commonly queried fields from the collection in the Second most commonly queried field and Third most commonly queried field fields respectively. To specify nested fields, use the dot notation. Do not include quotes ("") around nested fields that you specify using dot notation.

Warning

You can't specify field names that contain periods (.) for partitioning.

The specified fields are used to partition your archived data. Partitions are similar to folders. The date field is in the first position of the partition by default for the Date Match criteria. You can move another field to the first position of the partition if you frequently query by that field.

The order of fields listed in the path is important in the same way as it is in Compound Indexes. Data in the specified path is partitioned first by the value of the first field, and then by the value of the next field, and so on. Atlas supports queries on the specified fields using the partitions.

For example, suppose you are configuring the online archive for the movies collection in the sample_mflix database. If your archived field is the released date field, which you moved to the third position, your first queried field is title, and your second queried field is plot, your partition will look similar to the following:

/title/plot/released

Atlas creates partitions first for the title field, followed by the plot field, and then the released field. Atlas uses the partitions for queries on the following fields:

  • the title field,

  • the title field and the plot field,

  • the title field and the plot field and the released field.

Atlas can also use the partitions to support a query on the title and released fields. However, in this case, Atlas would not be as efficient in supporting the query as it would be if the query were on the title and plot fields only. Partitions are parsed in order; if a query omits a particular partition, Atlas is less efficient in making use of any partitions that follow that. Since a query on title and released omits plot, Atlas uses the title partition more efficiently than the released partition to support this query.

Atlas can't use the partitioning strategy to efficiently support queries on fields not specified here. Also, Atlas can't use the partitions to support queries that include the following fields without the title field:

  • the plot field,

  • the released field, or

  • the plot and released fields.

Enter up to two most commonly queried fields in the documents in the Most commonly queried field and Second most commonly queried field fields respectively. To specify nested fields, use the dot notation. Do not include quotes ("") around nested fields that you specify using dot notation.

The specified fields are used to partition your archived data. Partitions are similar to folders. The order of fields listed in the path is important in the same way as it is in Compound Indexes. Data in the specified path is partitioned first by the value of the first field, and then by the value of the next field. Atlas supports queries on the specified fields using the partitions.

For example, suppose you are configuring the online archive for the movies collection in the sample_mflix database. If your most queried field is the genres field and your second queried field is title, your partition will look similar to the following:

/genres/title

Atlas creates partitions first for the genres field, followed by the title field. Atlas uses the partitions for queries on the following fields:

  • the genres field,

  • the genres field and the title field.

Atlas can also use the partitions to support a query on the title field only. However, in this case, Atlas wouldn't be as efficient in supporting the query as it would be if the query were on the genres field only or the genres and title fields. Partitions are parsed in order; if a query omits a particular partition, Atlas is less efficient in making use of any partitions that follow that. Since a query on title omits genres, Atlas doesn't use the genres partition to support this query. Also, Atlas is less efficient in using the partitions to support a query on the title field followed by the genres field.

Atlas can't use the partitions to support queries on fields not specified here.

Enter up to two most commonly queried fields from the collection in the Second most commonly queried field and Third most commonly queried field fields respectively. To specify nested fields, use the dot notation. Do not include quotes ("") around nested fields that you specify using dot notation.

Warning

You can't specify field names that contain periods (.) for partitioning.

The specified fields are used to partition your archived data. Partitions are similar to folders. The date field is in the first position of the partition by default for the Date Match criteria. You can move another field to the first position of the partition if you frequently query by that field.

The order of fields listed in the path is important in the same way as it is in Compound Indexes. Data in the specified path is partitioned first by the value of the first field, and then by the value of the next field, and so on. Atlas supports queries on the specified fields using the partitions.

For example, suppose you are configuring the online archive for the movies collection in the sample_mflix database. If your archived field is the released date field, which you moved to the third position, your first queried field is title, and your second queried field is plot, your partition will look similar to the following:

/title/plot/released

Atlas creates partitions first for the title field, followed by the plot field, and then the released field. Atlas uses the partitions for queries on the following fields:

  • the title field,

  • the title field and the plot field,

  • the title field and the plot field and the released field.

Atlas can also use the partitions to support a query on the title and released fields. However, in this case, Atlas would not be as efficient in supporting the query as it would be if the query were on the title and plot fields only. Partitions are parsed in order; if a query omits a particular partition, Atlas is less efficient in making use of any partitions that follow that. Since a query on title and released omits plot, Atlas uses the title partition more efficiently than the released partition to support this query.

Atlas can't use the partitioning strategy to efficiently support queries on fields not specified here. Also, Atlas can't use the partitions to support queries that include the following fields without the title field:

  • the plot field,

  • the released field, or

  • the plot and released fields.

  • Choose fields that contain only characters supported on AWS. To learn more about the characters to avoid, see Creating object key names. Atlas skips and doesn't archive documents that contain unsupported characters.

  • Choose fields that do not contain polymorphic data. Atlas determines the data type of a partition field by sampling 10 documents from the collection. Atlas will not archive a document if the specified field value in a document does not match values in other documents in the same collection.

  • Choose fields that you query frequently and order them from the most frequently queried in the first position to the least queried field in the last position. For example, if you frequently query on the date field, then leave the date field in the first position. But if you frequently query on another field, then that field should be in the first position.

Note

For Online Archives created before June 2023, MongoDB doesn't recommend string type fields with high cardinality as a query field for Online Archives. For fields of type string with high cardinality, Atlas creates a large number of partitions. This doesn't apply to Online Archives created after June 2023. To learn more, read the MongoDB blog post.

Atlas supports the following partition attribute types:

  • date

  • double

  • int

  • long

  • objectId

  • string

  • boolean

To learn more about the supported partition attribute types, see Partition Attribute Types.

Note

You can use the explain command to return information about the data partitions used to satisfy a query. To learn more, see explain.

While partitions improve query performance, queries that don't contain these fields require a full collection scan of all archived documents, which will take longer and increase your costs. To learn more about how partitions improve your query performance in Atlas Data Federation, see Data Structure in S3.

9

Click Next to review and confirm the online archive settings. You can review the following archiving rule settings:

  • The name of the database and collection

  • The name of the cloud provider and the cloud provider region

  • The name of the date field (for Date Match only)

  • The number of days to keep data on the Atlas cluster (for Date Match only)

  • The number of days after which to delete archived data

  • The frequency and time window for archiving data

  • The custom query to use to identify data to archive (for Custom Criteria only)

  • The partition fields

Click Back to edit these settings if needed.

10

Copy and run the displayed query in your mongosh shell to see the documents that match the criteria in the rule you defined in step 5. You can run explain on the query to check whether it uses an index. Proceed to the next step to create the index if the fields are not indexed. If the fields are already indexed, skip to step 11.

11
12
  1. Click Begin Archiving in the Confirm an online archive tab.

  2. Click Confirm in the Begin Archiving window.

Note

Once your document is queued for archiving, you can no longer edit the document. See Restore Archived Data to move archived data back into the live Atlas cluster.

You can create up to 50 online archives per cluster and up to 20 can be active per cluster. The following limitations apply:

  • You can configure multiple online archives in the same namespace, but only one can be active at any given time.

  • You can't create multiple online archives on the same fields in the same collection.

  • You can't access your online archive during the following scenarios:

    • A full outage of the primary region of your cluster.

    • An outage of AWS S3 where your archived data is stored.

  • You can't use an archiving rule for more than one collection.

    Note

    If your goal is to archive data from several collections, you must create an archiving rule for each collection.

  • You can't archive data below the size of 5 MiB after 7 days. For 7 days immediately after Atlas creates an archive, Atlas archives all data. After 7 days, Atlas archives data only when your data size reaches 5 MiB.

  • Avoid updating or inserting documents that meet the archival condition when Atlas is archiving data. Otherwise, Atlas might capture an inconsistent snapshot of the data during the archival run. If updates occur, the version of the document that gets archived is uncertain.

Back

Online Archive