Manage Clusters
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Use the following resources to configure and manage Atlas clusters. These settings don't apply to serverless instances.
Select Cluster Tier
Select your preferred cluster tier. The cluster tier dictates the memory, storage, and IOPS specification for each data-bearing server [1] in the cluster.
You might see different values depending on your selected cloud provider and region.
Shared Clusters
Use Shared clusters as economical clusters for getting started with MongoDB and for low-throughput applications. These clusters deploy to a shared environment with access to a subset of Atlas features. To learn more about shared cluster limitations, see Atlas M0 (Free Cluster), M2, and M5 Limitations.
You can deploy one M0 cluster (free sandbox replica set
cluster) per Atlas project. You can upgrade
an M0 free cluster to an M2+ shared cluster at any time.
M2 and M5 clusters (low-cost shared clusters) provide the
following added features compared to M0 clusters:
- Backups for your cluster data
- Increased storage
- API access
Considerations
- Atlas deploys MongoDB 5.0 for all shared clusters (
M0,M2, andM5). However, Shared Clusters don't support all functionality in MongoDB version 5.0 and later. To learn more, see Atlas M0 (Free Cluster), M2, and M5 Limitations. Atlas supports shared cluster deployment in a subset of cloud providers and regions. Atlas grays out any shared cluster tiers that the selected cloud service provider and region doesn't support. To learn more about the regions that support shared cluster deployments, see:
Dedicated Clusters for Low-Traffic Applications
M10 and M20 cluster tiers support development environments
and low-traffic applications.
These clusters support replica set deployments only, but otherwise provide full access to Atlas features.
M10 and M20 cluster tiers run on a burstable performance
infrastructure.
Dedicated Clusters for High-Traffic Applications
M30+ cluster tiers support production environments with
high-traffic applications and large datasets.
These clusters support replica set and sharded cluster deployments with full access to Atlas features.
Some clusters have variants, denoted by the ❯ character. When you select these clusters, Atlas lists the variants and tags each cluster to distinguish their key characteristics.
NVMe Storage on AWS Clusters
For applications hosted on AWS that require low-latency and high-throughput I/O, Atlas offers storage options using locally attached ephemeral NVMe SSDs. The following cluster tiers have an NVMe option, with the size fixed at the cluster tier:
M40M50M60M80M200M400
Clusters with NVMe storage use Cloud Backups. You can't disable backup on NVMe clusters. If you want to use hourly backups, Atlas limits backups on NVMe clusters to once every 12 hours.
NVMe clusters use a hidden secondary node that consists of a provisioned volume with high throughput and IOPS to facilitate backup.
You can't pause an NVMe cluster.
NVMe clusters auto-scale to the next higher tier when 90% of the available storage space is consumed, and the migration requires an initial sync.
Free, Shared, and Dedicated Cluster Comparison
The following table highlights key differences between an M0 Free
Tier cluster, an M2 or M5 shared cluster, and an
M10+ dedicated cluster.
Free Cluster ( M0) | Shared Cluster ( M2 and M5) | Dedicated Cluster ( M10 and larger) | |
|---|---|---|---|
Storage (Data Size + Index Size) | 512 MB | M2: 2 GBM5: 5 GB | 10 - 4000 GB |
MongoDB Version Support | 5.0 | 5.0 | 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 5.0, Latest Release |
Metrics and Alerts | Limited | Limited | Full metrics, including the
Real Time Performance Tab,
and full alert configuration options. |
VPC Peering | No | No | |
Global Region Selection | Atlas supports deploying M0 clusters in a subset of
regions in AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. | Atlas supports deploying M2 and M5 clusters in a
subset of regions in AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. | Atlas supports deploying clusters globally on
Amazon Web Services,
Google Cloud Platform, and
Microsoft Azure |
Cross-Region Deployments | No | No | |
Backups | No | Yes, including queryable backups | |
Sharding | No | No | Yes, for clusters using an M30+ tier |
Dedicated Cluster | No, M0 free clusters run in a shared environment | No, M2 and M5 clusters run in a shared environment | Yes, M10+ clusters deploy each mongod process to
its own instance. |
Performance Advisor | No | No | Yes |
BI Connector for Atlas | No | No | Yes |
For a complete list of M0 free cluster, M2, and M5 limitations, see Atlas M0 (Free Cluster), M2, and M5 Limitations.
| [1] | For replica sets, the data-bearing servers are the servers hosting the replica set nodes. For sharded clusters, the data-bearing servers are the servers hosting the shards. For sharded clusters, Atlas also deploys servers for the config servers; these are charged at a rate separate from the cluster costs. |
Take the Next Steps
You can manage clusters in the following ways:
Action | Description |
|---|---|
Customize the storage capacity of your cluster. Each
cluster tier comes with a default set of resources. M10+
clusters provide the ability to customize your storage
capacity. | |
Configure the cluster tier ranges that Atlas uses to
automatically scale your cluster tier, storage capacity, or
both in response to cluster usage. | |
Configure additional cluster settings such as MongoDB
version, backup, and encryption options. | |
Reconfigure an existing cluster. Modify any of the available
Atlas configuration options. | |
Manage major version upgrades for your cluster. Atlas
enables you to upgrade the major version of an Atlas
cluster at any time. | |
Configure maintenance windows for your cluster. You can set
the hour of the day that Atlas should start weekly
maintenance on your cluster. | |
Pause, resume, or terminate an existing cluster. You can't
change the configuration of a paused cluster. Also, you
can't read data from or write data to a paused cluster. | |
Configure multi-cloud distribution for increased availability.
Atlas offers options to improve the availability and
workload balancing of your cluster. | |
Use replica set tags to direct queries from specific
applications to desired node types and regions. To use replica
set tags in your connection string and direct queries to desired
nodes, set the tag in the readPreferenceTags connection
string option. |