Scale a Free or Flex Cluster to a Dedicated Cluster

You can scale the cluster tier of a Free cluster or a Flex cluster to a dedicated cluster.

Required Access

To scale the cluster tier, you must have at least the Project Cluster Manager role for the project.

Database Editions

You selected either Atlas Core or Atlas Infinite when you created the Free cluster or Flex cluster. Atlas stored that selection and didn't apply it to the Free cluster or Flex cluster itself, so it didn't change how that cluster works.

To learn about each edition, see MongoDB Atlas Infinite: Overview and MongoDB Atlas Core: Overview.

When you scale the cluster tier to a dedicated cluster, Atlas uses the edition that you already specified and that Atlas stored. If you want, you can select the other edition at that point.

Selecting Atlas Infinite is opt in. By default, Atlas scales the cluster tier to a dedicated cluster on Atlas Core, unless you selected Atlas Infinite when you created the Free cluster or Flex cluster.

Considerations

Scaling a Free cluster or a Flex cluster to a dedicated cluster requires downtime. To prevent data corruption, halt write operations for the duration of the scale operation.
You can't scale a dedicated cluster back to a Free cluster or a Flex cluster.
You can't change the database edition of a cluster after you create it, in either direction between Atlas Core and Atlas Infinite.

Procedure

To scale a Free cluster or a Flex cluster to a dedicated cluster, send a request to the tenant upgrade endpoint for your source cluster type. The databaseEdition field in the request body sets the database edition of the resulting dedicated cluster. If you omit databaseEdition, Atlas scales the cluster to a dedicated cluster on Atlas Core.

Set the Accept header to the resource version for the endpoint that you call: application/vnd.atlas.2023-01-01+json for the Free cluster endpoint, and application/vnd.atlas.2024-11-13+json for the Flex cluster endpoint.

To scale to a dedicated cluster on Atlas Infinite, set databaseEdition to INFINITE in the request body:
- For a Free cluster, send a POST request to /groups/{groupId}/clusters/tenantUpgrade.
- For a Flex cluster, send a POST request to /groups/{groupId}/flexClusters:tenantUpgrade.
To scale to a dedicated cluster on Atlas Core, omit databaseEdition or set it to CORE:
- For a Free cluster, send a POST request to /groups/{groupId}/clusters/tenantUpgrade.
- For a Flex cluster, send a POST request to /groups/{groupId}/flexClusters:tenantUpgrade.

To upgrade the cluster tier, disk size, and/or MongoDB version for an M0 or Flex Atlas cluster using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas clusters upgrade [clusterName] [options]

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

During the public preview, atlas clusters upgrade does not support scaling to an Atlas Infinite cluster. That command has no database edition option, so it always scales a Free cluster or a Flex cluster to a dedicated cluster on Atlas Core. If you set databaseEdition in a configuration file, the command drops the field and returns a warning instead of an error.

Use an atlas api command instead. These commands send your request body to the Atlas Administration API unchanged, so Atlas applies databaseEdition.

Create a payload.json file that sets databaseEdition to INFINITE. Replace the other values with your cluster configuration:

{
  "name": "{CLUSTER-NAME}",
  "databaseEdition": "INFINITE",
  "providerSettings": {
    "providerName": "AWS",
    "instanceSizeName": "M10",
    "regionName": "US_EAST_1"
  }
}

To scale a Free cluster, run the following command:

atlas api clusters upgradeTenantUpgrade \
  --version 2023-01-01 \
  --groupId {GROUP-ID} \
  --file payload.json

To scale a Flex cluster, run the following command:

atlas api flexClusters tenantUpgrade \
  --version 2024-11-13 \
  --groupId {GROUP-ID} \
  --file payload.json

If you omit databaseEdition, Atlas uses the edition that you chose when you created the Free cluster or Flex cluster.

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

If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.
If it's not already displayed, select your desired project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.
In the sidebar, click Clusters under the Database heading.

The Clusters page displays.

Open the cluster configuration.

For the cluster you want to scale, click Edit Config.

Select the Dedicated tab.

At the top of your configuration settings, click the Dedicated tab.

Select the database edition.

To scale the cluster tier to a dedicated cluster on Atlas Infinite, turn on the Try the new edition: Atlas Infinite toggle. To use Atlas Core, leave the toggle off.

Select the cluster tier.

Select the tier for your dedicated cluster. During public preview, Atlas Infinite clusters support the M10 through M60 cluster tiers. Atlas Core clusters support M10 and larger cluster tiers.

Apply your changes.

Click Apply changes. Atlas displays the downtime required to scale the cluster tier before it applies your changes.

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