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Pause, Resume, or Terminate a Cluster

You can pause, resume, or terminate your clusters. For Serverless instances, which are deprecated, see Terminate a Serverless Instance.

Considerations for Paused Clusters

  • You can't:

    • Change the configuration of a paused cluster.

    • Read data from or write data to a paused cluster.

    • Add or remove Search Nodes to a paused cluster.

  • For paused clusters, Atlas:

  • If you have a Backup Compliance Policy enabled, when you resume a cluster, Atlas automatically enables Cloud Backup. If the Backup Compliance Policy has the Require Point in Time Restore to all clusters option set to On, Atlas automatically enables Continuous Cloud Backup and adjusts the restore window according to the Backup Compliance Policy. Atlas automatically modifies the backup to meet the minimum requirements of the Backup Compliance Policy.

    If you deployed Search Nodes separately, Atlas rebuilds the Atlas Search indexes to restore the data on the Search Nodes that it deleted when you paused the Atlas cluster.

  • If a paused cluster doesn't have Encryption at Rest enabled, you can't toggle the Require Encryption at Rest using Customer Key Management for all clusters option to On in a Backup Compliance Policy.

  • In certain scenarios, pausing a cluster pauses its required maintenance tasks. When you unpause the cluster, these maintenance tasks may start immediately, which could delay cluster availability.

Required Access

To pause or resume a cluster, you must have Project Cluster Manager access or higher to the project.

To terminate a cluster, you must have Project Owner or Organization Owner access.

Pause One Cluster

Important

Feature unavailable in Flex Clusters and Serverless Instances

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

Depending on your cluster tier, Atlas either pauses clusters automatically or when you manually initiate it.

M0 Clusters

Atlas automatically pauses all inactive M0 clusters after 60 days.

M2 and M5 Clusters

You can't pause deprecated M2 and M5 clusters (deprecated). Atlas doesn't automatically pause inactive M2 or M5 clusters.

Flex Clusters

You can't pause Flex clusters. Atlas doesn't automatically pause inactive Flex clusters.

M10+ Clusters

You can pause M10 or larger clusters:

  • If they do not use NVMe storage.

  • For up to 30 days. If you don't resume the cluster within 30 days, Atlas resumes the cluster.

    Note

    You must allow a recently resumed cluster to run for at least 60 minutes before pausing the cluster again. This allows the cluster to process all the maintenance jobs that were queued while it was paused.

Atlas only charges paused clusters for storage. Atlas does not charge for any other services or data transfer on paused clusters.

To pause a running Atlas cluster using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas clusters pause <clusterName> [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas clusters pause.

To pause a cluster with the Atlas Administration API, see Modify One Cluster.

To pause an Atlas cluster using the Atlas UI:

1

In Atlas, go to the Clusters page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  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 it's not already displayed, click Clusters in the sidebar.

    The Clusters page displays.

2

Pause the cluster.

  1. For the cluster you want to pause, click .

  2. Click Pause Cluster.

  3. Click Pause Cluster to confirm your choice.

M0 Clusters

Atlas automatically stops collecting monitoring information for an M0 cluster after a few days of inactivity.

If there is no activity for 60 days, then Atlas automatically pauses the cluster completely, disallowing any connections to it until you resume the cluster. Atlas sends an email seven days before pausing the cluster. Atlas sends another email after pausing the cluster.

You can resume the cluster at any time unless the paused cluster was running on an old version that Atlas can't restore to the current version. You should export a copy of your data if you don't plan to use your Free cluster for an extended period of time. To learn more, see Restore Data From Paused M0 Cluster.

You can't initiate a pause for M0 clusters.

Local Deployments

To pause the specified Atlas deployment using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas deployments pause <deploymentName> [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas deployments pause.

Resume One Cluster

Important

Feature unavailable in Flex Clusters and Serverless Instances

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

Note

If you have a Backup Compliance Policy enabled, when you resume a cluster, Atlas automatically enables Cloud Backup. If the Backup Compliance Policy has the Require Point in Time Restore to all clusters option set to On, Atlas automatically enables Continuous Cloud Backup and adjusts the restore window according to the Backup Compliance Policy. Atlas automatically modifies the backup to meet the minimum requirements of the Backup Compliance Policy.

If you deployed Search Nodes separately, Atlas rebuilds the Atlas Search indexes to restore the data on the Search Nodes that it deleted when you paused the Atlas cluster.

To resume collection of monitoring information for an Atlas M0 cluster paused for monitoring, connect to that cluster using a MongoDB Driver, mongosh, or Data Explorer.

Resume a Cloud Deployment

To resume an Atlas M10+ cluster that you paused previously:

To start a paused Atlas cluster using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas clusters start <clusterName> [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas clusters start.

1

In Atlas, go to the Clusters page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  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 it's not already displayed, click Clusters in the sidebar.

    The Clusters page displays.

2

Resume the cluster.

For the cluster you want to pause, either:

  • Click , then click Resume Cluster, or

  • Click Resume.

Note

If you don't resume an M10+ cluster within 30 days, Atlas resumes the cluster.

Resume a Local Deployment with the Atlas CLI

To start an Atlas deployment using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas deployments start <deploymentName> [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas deployments start.

Terminate One Deployment

Use the following resources to terminate a deployment.

Terminate a Cloud Deployment

To terminate an Atlas cloud cluster:

Note

If you enabled Termination Protection on your cluster, you must first disable it.

To delete one cluster in the specified project using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas clusters delete <clusterName> [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas clusters delete.

1

In Atlas, go to the Clusters page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  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 it's not already displayed, click Clusters in the sidebar.

    The Clusters page displays.

2

If you enabled Termination Protection, disable it.

  1. Click next to the cluster you want to disable Termination Protection for.

  2. Click Edit Config from the drop-down menu.

  3. Click Additional Settings.

  4. Toggle Termination Protection to Off.

  5. Click Review Changes.

  6. Click Apply Changes.

3

Click next to the cluster you want to terminate.

4

Click Terminate from the drop-down menu.

5

(Optional) Keep existing snapshots after termination.

If you have a Backup Compliance Policy enabled and you terminate a cluster, Atlas automatically maintains all existing snapshots after the termination according to the backup policy. Atlas retains the oplog for restoring a point in time with continuous cloud backup in a static state until Atlas can no longer use them for continuous cloud backup.

Otherwise, if you have Cloud Backup enabled, you can toggle Keep existing snapshots after termination to On.

If you have Cloud Backup disabled, this option is unavilable.

6

Confirm the termination.

  1. Enter the cluster name.

  2. Click Terminate.

Atlas terminates the cluster after completing any in-progress deployment changes. Atlas also terminates all Search Nodes configured for the cluster.

Atlas bills for the hours that the cluster was active. To learn more about Atlas billing, see Manage Billing.

Warning

Terminating a cluster also deletes any backup snapshots for that cluster. See Backup Scheduling, Retention, and On-Demand Snapshots. If you terminate a cluster with associated tags that don't apply to any other cluster, Atlas deletes the tags. You can't restore these deleted tags.

Note

Public IP Address Retention

When you terminate a cluster with a lifetime of 12 hours or more, Atlas reserves the cluster's public IP address, bound to its original cluster name.

The following time frames apply from the moment you terminate the cluster:

Cluster Lifetime
IP Address Retention

Less than 12 hours

Not retained

12 to 35 hours

12 to 35 hours (equal to the cluster lifetime)

36 hours or more

36 hours

If, in the applicable time frame, you create a new cluster with the same name, Atlas reassigns the reserved public IP address to that cluster.

cluster IP addresses don't change when you or Atlas pause or resume clusters.

Terminate a Local Deployment with the Atlas CLI

To delete the specified Atlas deployment using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas deployments delete [deploymentName] [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas deployments delete.

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