Exploring MongoDB: MongoDB Atlas
Author: Charleste King | 5 min read | January 6, 2021
MongoDB Atlas is the cloud-based, managed database service offered directly by the MongoDB developers. This Platform as a Service offering makes it easy to get started with MongoDB without worrying about configuring and managing the underlying infrastructure. Your development team can focus on making applications rather than administering technology.
You can get Atlas for free if you use the Shared Clusters tier, making it an excellent choice if you want to explore what this platform has to offer. Paid plans start at $57 for Dedicated Clusters and $95 for Dedicated Multi-region Clusters.
Benefits of MongoDB Atlas Edition
- Substantial cost savings: Whether you’re comparing the cost with implementing MongoDB Enterprise edition or another enterprise-grade database technology, MongoDB Atlas typically comes out on top. You’re also shifting your expenses from Capex to Opex, which may be more friendly to your IT budget constraints.
- Leveraging MongoDB’s cloud-optimized architecture: MongoDB is a cloud-focused database technology, so using it on a managed database platform allows you to maximize its potential.
- Quickly and easily scale your databases: Since your MongoDB databases are set up on a distributed cloud infrastructure, it’s a simple process for scaling horizontally and vertically.
- Robust security measures: Atlas includes security functionality and encryption that allows you to maintain compliance and improve data privacy. Since you’re using infrastructure that’s maintained by MongoDB, you may also end up with access to better security infrastructure than if you implemented this database on-premise.
- Automating many IT tasks: The more time your development team has to worry about managing the database, the less time they spend on their own work. Atlas handles configuration, upgrades, provisioning, maintenance, and all the other tasks that it takes to keep databases running properly.
- Streamline your migration processes: MongoDB Atlas is easy to migrate to. If you run into any issues, you can get help from the platform or reach out to one of the many specialists in the third-party development and service provider community.
- Snapshots on-demand: Take snapshots of your MongoDB databases whenever you need them.
- Protect your most important workloads: You don’t want an important database going down on mission-critical workloads. Unexpected downtime kills productivity and can lead to all sorts of issues. This highly available database platform offers fully managed backup and recovery, along with an infrastructure that uses distributed fault tolerance and point-in-time recovery.
- Implement developer-friendly tools: Atlas offers an incredible toolset for developers, including native tools and drivers that streamline data manipulation, visualization, and analysis.
Major Features of MongoDB Atlas Edition
- Multi-cloud data distribution
- BI connector
- Live data visualization
- MongoDB Compass
- Real-time triggers
- Customizable alerts
- Resource optimization tools
Should You Use MongoDB Atlas Edition?
MongoDB Atlas edition provides a fully managed experience for organizations that want to focus on creating the best applications possible without getting caught up on the underlying details. You avoid technical debt and can best allocate your development resources, plus you’re working directly with the people who created MongoDB.
You also avoid the high upfront costs associated with the Enterprise edition without compromising on the features. If you have workloads that need elastic scaling, multi-region availability, and fully automated infrastructure management, then Atlas is an excellent choice. However, you do want to keep in mind that your costs go beyond the monthly subscription payment. If you have many backups, you need to account for the cost of storing and managing those.
Another drawback is losing out on the background visibility with the platform. Since MongoDB Atlas manages provisioning, maintenance, upgrades, and other operations, they also set the maintenance windows. If you need more visibility and control in these areas, while keeping many of the same features, Enterprise edition may work better.
Looking for information on MongoDB: Enterprise Edition? Check out my blog on that version here.
Looking for information on MongoDB: Community Edition? Check out my blog on that version here.
Read This Next
MongoDB: Which Version is Right for You?
This paper will give a brief history on MongoDB and why organizations are gravitating toward this open source database system. We’ll then go into the four different versions: MongoDB Enterprise, MongoDB Community, MongoDB Atlas and Percona MongoDB to uncover the pros, cons and different features to give you the big picture of which edition provides the support and functionality you need.
