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Live Migrate Your Replica Set to Atlas

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  • Restrictions
  • Prerequisites
  • Considerations
  • Migrate Your Cluster
Important
Serverless Instances are in Preview

Serverless instances are in preview and do not support this feature at this time. To learn more, see Serverless Instance Limitations.

Atlas can perform a Live Migration of a source replica set to an Atlas cluster, keeping the cluster in sync with the remote source until you cut your applications over to the Atlas cluster.

Once you reach the cutover step in the following procedure, stop writes to the source cluster: stop your application instances, point them to the Atlas cluster, and restart them.

  • You can't select an M0 (Free Tier) or M2/M5 shared cluster as the source or target for Live Migration. To migrate data from an M0 (Free Tier) or M2/M5 shared cluster to a paid cluster, see Modify a Cluster.
  • Live Migration does not support VPC peering or private endpoints for either the source or target cluster.

To live migrate a sharded cluster, see Live Migrate Your Sharded Cluster to Atlas.

Important
Source Cluster Readiness

To help ensure a smooth data migration, your source cluster should meet all production cluster recommendations. Check the Operations Checklist and Production Notes before beginning the Live Migration process.

Atlas Live Migration supports the following migration paths:

Source Replica Set MongoDB Version
Destination Atlas Replica Set MongoDB Version
2.6
4.0 and later
3.0
4.0 and later
3.2
4.0 and later
3.4
4.0 and later
3.6
4.0 and later
4.0
4.0 and later
4.2
4.2 and later
4.4
4.4 and later
5.0
5.0 and later
Important

If you are migrating from a MongoDB 3.6 cluster, update and test your applications in context of the target Atlas cluster.

Configure network permissions for the following components:

Any firewalls for the source cluster must grant the live migration server access to the source cluster.

The Atlas Live Migration process streams data through a MongoDB-controlled application server. Atlas provides the IP ranges of the MongoDB Live Migration servers during the Live Migration process. Grant these IP ranges access to your source cluster. This allows the MongoDB Live Migration server to connect to the source clusters.

Note

If your organization has strict network requirements and you cannot enable the required network access to MongoDB Live Migration servers, see Live Migrate a Community Deployment to Atlas.

Atlas allows connections to a cluster from hosts added to the project IP access list. Add the IP addresses or CIDR blocks of your application hosts to the project IP access list. Do this before beginning the migration procedure.

Atlas temporarily adds the IP addresses of the Atlas migration servers to the project IP access list. During the migration procedure, you can't edit or delete this entry. Atlas removes this entry once the procedure completes.

To learn how to add entries to the Atlas IP access list, see Configure IP Access List Entries.

Before starting the Live Migration procedure, Atlas runs validation checks on the source and target clusters.

Note

Unlike for sharded clusters, live migrating your replica set to Atlas does not require that Atlas has connectivity to the hostname and port of each node in the source cluster. To run the migration process, Atlas automatically discovers the hostnames for the replica set based on the hostname you provide. If this fails, Atlas migrates the replica set using your provided reachable hostname. To learn more, see Network Access.

Atlas only supports SCRAM for connecting to source clusters enforcing authentication.

If the source cluster enforces authentication, create a user with the following privileges:

  • Read all databases and collections. The readAnyDatabase role on the admin database covers this requirement.
  • Read the oplog.

Various built-in roles provide sufficient privileges. For example:

  • For source clusters running MongoDB version 3.4 or later a user must have, at a minimum, both clusterMonitor and readAnyDatabase roles. For example:

    use admin
    db.createUser(
    {
    user: "mySourceUser",
    pwd: "mySourceP@$$word",
    roles: [ "clusterMonitor", "readAnyDatabase" ]
    }
    )
  • For source clusters running MongoDB version 3.2 a user must have, at a minimum, both clusterManager and readAnyDatabase roles, as well as read access on the local database. This requires a custom role, which you can create with the following commands:

    use admin
    db.createRole(
    {
    role: "migrate",
    privileges: [
    { resource: { db: "local", collection: "" }, actions: [ "find" ] }
    ],
    roles: ["readAnyDatabase", "clusterManager"]
    }
    )
    db.createUser(
    {
    user: "mySourceUser",
    pwd: "mySourceP@$$word",
    roles: [ "migrate" ]
    }
    )
  • For source clusters running MongoDB version 2.6 or 3.0 a user must have, at a minimum, the readAnyDatabase role. For example:

    use admin
    db.createUser(
    {
    user: "mySourceUser",
    pwd: "mySourceP@$$word",
    roles: [ "readAnyDatabase" ]
    }
    )

Specify the user name and password to Atlas when prompted by the Live Migration procedure.

If the source cluster uses a different authentication mechanism to connect, you can use mongomirror to migrate data from the source cluster to the target Atlas cluster.

If your MongoDB deployment contains indexes with keys which exceed the Index Key Limit, you must set the MongoDB server parameter failIndexKeyTooLong to false before starting the Live Migration procedure.

Note

Modifying indexes so that they contain no oversized keys is preferable to setting the failIndexKeyTooLong server parameter to false. See the server manual for strategies on dealing with oversized index keys.

Important
Index Key Limit

failIndexKeyTooLong was deprecated in MongoDB version 4.2 and is removed in MongoDB 4.4 and later.

When configuring the target cluster, consider the following:

  • The live migration process streams data through a MongoDB-managed application server. Each server runs on infrastructure hosted in the nearest region to the source cluster. The following regions are available:

    Europe
    • Frankfurt
    • Ireland
    • London
    Americas
    • Eastern US
    • Western US
    APAC
    • Mumbai
    • Singapore
    • Sydney
    • Tokyo
  • Due to network latency, the live migration process may not be able to keep up with a source cluster that has an extremely heavy write load. In this situation, you can still migrate directly from the source cluster by pointing the mongomirror tool to the destination Atlas cluster.
  • The live migration process may not be able to keep up with a source cluster whose write workload is greater than what can be transferred and applied to the destination cluster. You may need to scale the destination cluster up to a tier with more processing power, bandwidth or disk IO.
  • The target Atlas cluster must be a replica set.
  • You can't select an M0 (Free Tier) or M2/M5 shared-tier cluster as the target cluster for live migration.
  • Do not change the featureCompatibilityVersion flag while Atlas Live Migration is running.

Atlas doesn't migrate any user or role data to the target cluster.

If the source cluster enforced authentication, you must re-create the credentials used by your applications on the target Atlas cluster. Atlas uses SCRAM for user authentication. To learn more, see Configure Database Users.

Don't make any namespace changes during the migration process, such as using the renameCollection command or executing an aggregation pipeline that includes the $out aggregation stage.

The Live Migration process makes a best attempt to continue a migration during temporary network interruptions and elections on the source or target clusters. However, these events might cause the Live Migration process to fail. If the Live Migration process can't recover automatically, restart it from the beginning.

After the migration process completes, your cluster restarts each of its members one at a time. This is called a rolling restart, and as a consequence, a failover will occur on the primary. To ensure a smooth migration, consider running a Test Failover procedure before migrating your data to the target cluster.

Note
Staging and Production Migrations

Consider running this procedure twice. Run a partial migration that stops at the Perform the Cutover step first. This creates an up-to-date Atlas-backed staging cluster to test application behavior and performance using the latest driver version that supports the MongoDB version of the Atlas cluster.

After you test your application, run the full migration procedure using a separate Atlas cluster to create your Atlas-backed production environment.

Important

Avoid making changes to the source cluster configuration while the Live Migration procedure runs, such as removing replica set members or modifying mongod runtime settings, such as featureCompatibilityVersion.

Before starting the import process:

  • If you don't already have a destination cluster, create a new Atlas deployment and configure it as needed. For complete documentation on creating an Atlas cluster, see Create a New Cluster.
  • After your Atlas cluster is deployed, ensure that you can connect to it from all client hardware where your applications run. Testing your connection string helps ensure that your data migration process can complete with minimal downtime.

    1. Download and install mongosh on a representative client machine, if you don't already have it.
    2. Connect to your destination cluster using the connection string from the Atlas UI. For more information, see Connect via mongosh.

    Once you have verified your connectivity to your target cluster, start the import procedure.

1
  1. In the left-side panel of your organization's page, click Live Migration and choose Select Cluster for General Live Migration.
  2. Navigate to the destination Atlas cluster and click the ellipsis ... button. On the Cluster list, the ellipsis ... button appears beneath the cluster name, as shown in the following screenshot. When you view a cluster's details, the ellipsis ... appears on the right-hand side of the screen, next to the Connect and Configuration buttons.

    The ellipsis button is located under the cluster name.
  3. Click Migrate Data to this Cluster.
  4. Atlas displays a walk-through screen with instructions on how to proceed with the live migration. The process copies the data from your source cluster to the new target cluster. After you complete the walk-through, you can point your application to the new cluster.

    You will need the following details for your source cluster to facilitate the migration:

    • The hostname and port of the source cluster's primary member
    • The username and password used to connect to the source cluster
    • If the source cluster uses TLS/SSL and is not using a public Certificate Authority (CA), you will need the source cluster's CA file.

    Prepare the information as stated in the walk-through screen, then click I'm Ready To Migrate.

  5. Atlas displays a walk-through screen that collects information required to connect to the source cluster.

    • Atlas displays the IP address of the MongoDB application server responsible for your live migration at the top of the walk-through screen. Configure your source cluster firewall to grant access to the displayed IP address.
    • Enter the hostname and port of the primary member of the source cluster into the provided text box. For example, mongoPrimary.example.net:27017.
    • If the source cluster enforces authentication, enter a username and password into the provided text boxes.

      See Source Cluster Security for guidance on the user permissions required by Atlas live migration.

    • If the source cluster uses TLS/SSL, toggle the SSL button.
    • If the source replica set uses TLS/SSL and is not using a public Certificate Authority (CA), copy the contents of the source cluster's CA file into the provided text box.
    • If you wish to drop all collections on the target cluster before beginning the migration process, toggle the switch marked Clear any existing data on your target cluster? to Yes.
  6. Click Validate to confirm that Atlas can connect to the source replica set.

    If validation fails, check that:

    • You have added Atlas to the IP access list on your source cluster.
    • The provided user credentials, if any, exist on the source cluster and have the required permissions.
    • The SSL toggle is enabled only if the source cluster requires it.
    • The CA file provided, if any, is valid and correct.
  7. Click Start Migration to start the migration process.

    Once the migration process begins, the Atlas UI displays the Migrating Data walk-through screen for the destination Atlas cluster.

    The walk-through screen updates as the destination cluster proceeds through the migration process. The migration process includes:

    • Copying collections from source to destination.
    • Creating indexes on the destination.
    • Tailing of oplog entries from the source cluster.

    A lag time value is displayed during the final oplog tailing phase that represents the current lag between the source and target clusters. This lag time might fluctuate depending on the rate of oplog generation on the source, but should decrease over time as oplog entries are copied to the target cluster.

When the lag timer and the Prepare to Cutover button turn green, proceed to the next step.

2

When Atlas detects that the source and destination clusters are nearly in sync, it starts an extendable 72 hour timer to begin the cutover procedure. If the 72 hour period passes, Atlas stops synchronizing with the source cluster. You can extend the time remaining by 24 hours by clicking the Extend time hyperlink below the <time> left to cut over timer.

  1. Once you are prepared to cut your applications over to the destination Atlas cluster, click Prepare to Cutover.
  2. Atlas displays a walk-through screen with instructions on how to proceed with the cutover. These steps are also outlined below:

    1. Stop your application. This ensures that no additional writes are generated to the source cluster.
    2. Wait for the optime gap to reach zero. When the counter reaches zero, the source and destination clusters are in sync.
    3. Restart your application using the new connection string provided in step 3 of the Live Migrate cutover UI.
  3. Once you have completed the cutover procedure and confirmed your applications are working normally with the Atlas cluster, click Cut Over to complete the migration procedure. This allows Atlas to:

    • Mark the migration plan as complete.
    • Remove the Application Server subnets from the destination cluster IP access list.
    • Remove the database user that Live Migrate used to import data to the destination cluster.

If you have any questions regarding migration support beyond what is covered in this documentation, or if you encounter an error during migration, please request support through the Atlas UI.

To file a support ticket:

  1. Click Support in the left-hand navigation.
  2. Click Request Support.
  3. For Issue Category, select Help with live migration.
  4. For Priority, select the appropriate priority. For questions, please select Medium Priority. If there was a failure in migration, please select High Priority.
  5. For Request Summary, please include Live Migration in your summary.
  6. For More details, please include any other relevant details to your question or migration error.
  7. Click the Request Support button to submit the form.
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