Database Backups with MongoDB Atlas on AWS

Jay Gordon
May 5, 2017 | Updated: January 14, 2019
#Cloud

DBAs, DevOps or Sys Admin professionals spend valuable time writing scripts for managing database backups. Whether a combination of common tools such as rsync or native dump scripts, database backups tend to be tricky from the OS level. Then there are options to do things such as snapshots of the disk, but is the database currently in the middle of a write when this snapshot happens? Do you have a RAID for your volumes that is frozen when you do such a snapshot?

What about commercially licensed enterprise backup software if you aren't certain how to leverage one of the other options mentioned? Are you spending on both your software license costs and the physical storage to retain these backups? There could be options for you, but think about the cost associated with the hardware you may need, the software licensing, then the monitoring associated with ensuring the backups actually happened.

Does your database in the cloud right now have a recovery time objective? Does your database in the cloud right now have recovery point objective? These are business critical processes to consider if you need a sustainable continuity plan during any data layer failure A cohesive backup strategy is directly connected to the existence of some businesses.

Several months back a large open source provider ran into an issue with database backups. The issue wasn't just that the backups weren't there, it was also that no one noticed the backups didn't work during a restore. This leads me to the next question: who do you trust to ensure that the vital application data will be easily restored in the case of a failure?

MongoDB Atlas backups consistently provide you with point in time recovery of your MongoDB data. There's no human intervention, just access your backups in the Atlas control panel and start working with your recovery data. We provide you with the ability to query one of the snapshots available to you to ensure that the data you're looking for exists prior to restoring it.

Let's go over how simple it is for you to either restore data to a new Atlas cluster, an existing cluster or even to your local computer.

Restore to a new cluster

MongoDB Atlas Cluster

If you decide you'd like another Atlas cluster with your MongoDB data it only takes a few clicks. First, build your new Atlas cluster and name it something unique. Then go to the backup section in your Atlas control panel and select the backup you'd like to restore. It's important to ensure you restore to a like version cluster. That means restore MongoDB 3.2 database snapshots to MongoDB Atlas 3.2 clusters. The same goes for all MongoDB 3.4 clusters. You will not be able to mix and match versions of backup and cluster.

Cluster0-shard-0 is the name of my original cluster, I can go to the backups for this and select my snapshot or point in time backup I would like to restore. Once I finish selecting a snapshot, I click "NEXT" in the bottom of the restore menu.

Section 2 of the restore process asks, "Do you want to restore this snapshot to a MongoDB cluster or download a copy of your data?" In this case I want to restore to a cluster, but I want to restore it to a new one. So first, I'll click "RESTORE MY SNAPSHOT" at the bottom of the window. I'll be brought to Section 3 of the restore process that will ask which replica set I want to restore to. I created "Cluster0-restore" just for this purpose, so I'll click the dropdown and select this cluster.

Choose replica set

Once I click the restore button, the Atlas agents will begin to copy the contents of the snapshot over to your Atlas cluster. Once completed it will ensure that all three nodes have replication working as normal.

Or restore to the same cluster

You do not have to restore to a new cluster. If the current production database requires a restore, you can select it as the restore target.

Your cluster will restore the data to one cluster node at a time and ensure replication continues to work once the restore process is done. There's no need for you to modify the application's connection string either. You can just wait for the process to finish and get your app back to work.

Additionally, you can select an HTTPS based download of the snapshot if you would like to work with this data locally or even to place in a cold storage location. Regardless of your restore method, you'll know that the data will be there if you use MongoDB Atlas backups.

Get started with MongoDB Atlas today, you can migrate easily using our live migration tool and ensure your data is always backed up!

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Secure Your Database With MongoDB Atlas

Say you’ve just built your application and for the data layer, you’ve chosen to deploy MongoDB on AWS EC2 instances that you will manage yourself. Pause for a moment and consider your self-managed MongoDB instances over the lifetime of your application. Now ask yourself these questions: Who will keep our database operating system up to date? Who will ensure the database software is recent?

May 2, 2017

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Data and the European Landscape: 3 Trends for 2022

The past two years have brought massive changes for IT leaders: large and complex cloud migrations; unprecedented numbers of people suddenly working, shopping and learning from home; and a burst in demand for digital-first experiences. Like everyone else, we are hoping that 2022 isn’t so disruptive (fingers crossed!), our customer conversations in Europe do lead us to believe the new year will bring new business priorities. We’re already noticing changes in conversations around vendor lock-in, thanks to the Digital Markets Act, a new enthusiasm for combining operational and analytical data to drive new insights faster, and a more strategic embrace of sustainability. Here’s how we see these trends playing out in 2022. Digital markets act draws new attention to cloud vendor lock-in in Europe We’ve heard plenty about the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act , which, in the name of ensuring fair and open digital markets, would place new restrictions on companies that are deemed to be digital “gatekeepers” in the region. That discussion will be nothing compared to the vigorous debate we expect once the EU begins the very tricky political business of determining exactly which companies will fall under the act. If the EU sets the bar for revenues, users, and market size high enough, it’s possible that the regulation will end up affecting only Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft. But a European group representing 2,500 CIOs and almost 700 organizations is now pushing to have the regulation encompass more software companies. Their main concern centers around “distorted competition” in cloud infrastructure services and a worry that companies are being locked into one cloud vendor. A trend that will likely increase in 2022 that pushes back on cloud vendor lock-in is embracing multi-cloud strategies. We should expect to see more organisations in the region pursuing multi-cloud environments as a means to improve business continuity and agility whilst being able to access best of breed services from each cloud provider. As we have always said …”it’s fine to date your cloud provider….but don’t ever marry them.” The convergence of operational and analytical data The processing of operational and analytical data is almost always contained in different data systems, each tuned to that use case and managed by separate teams. But because that data lives in separate places, it’s almost impossible for organisations to generate insights and automate actions in real time, against live data. We believe 2022 is the year we’ll see a critical mass of companies in the region make significant progress toward a convergence of their operational and analytical data. We’re already starting to see some of the principles of microservices in operational applications, such as domain ownership, be applied to analytics as well. We’re hearing about this from so many of our customers locally, who are looking at MongoDB as an application data platform that allows them to perform queries across both real-time and historical data, using a unified platform and a single query API. This results in the applications they are building becoming more intelligent and contextual to their users, while avoiding dependencies on centralized analytics teams that otherwise slow down how quickly new, data-driven experiences can be released. Sustainability drives local strategic IT choice Technology always has some environmental cost. Sometimes that’s obvious — such as the energy needs and emissions associated with Bitcoin mining. More often, though, the environmental costs are well hidden. The European Green Deal commits the European Union to reducing emissions by 55% by 2030, with a focus on sustainable industry. With the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) recently completed in Glasgow, and coming off the hottest European summer on record, climate issues have become top of mind. That means our customers are increasingly looking to make their technical operations more sustainable — including in their choice of cloud provider and data centers. According to research from IDC , more than 20% of CxOs say that sustainability is now important in selecting a strategic cloud service provider, and some 29% of CxOs are including sustainability into their RFPs for cloud services. Most interesting, 26% say they are willing to switch to providers with better sustainability credentials. Historically, it’s been difficult to make a switch like that. That’s part of the reason we built MongoDB Atlas — to give our customers the flexibility to run in any region , with any of the three largest cloud providers, and to make it easy to switch between them, and even to run a single database cluster across them. Publicly available information about the footprint of individual regions and even single data centers will make it simpler for companies to make informed decisions. Already, at least one cloud platform has added indicators to regions with the lowest carbon footprint. Source: IDC, European Customers Engage Services Providers at All Stages of Their Cloud Journey, IDC Survey Spotlight, Doc #EUR248484021, Dec 2021

December 21, 2021