MongoDB

This feature is available in Magnus Box 19.9.3 and later.

MongoDB is a general-purpose NoSQL database developed by MongoDB, Inc.

Magnus Box supports backing up MongoDB databases as a Protected Item type.

No temporary disk space is required: database content is streamed directly from the MongoDB server into Magnus Box's chunking deduplication engine without requiring any temporary disk space. All backup jobs require only incremental storage using Magnus Box's chunking technology.

Backing up data from your MongoDB server will cause some additional load on the MongoDB server for the duration of the backup job.

The underlying technology is mongodump. Magnus Box will use your system installed mongodump version for best compatibility with the exact feature set of your MongoDB server. This is the officially supported mechanism for backing up a MongoDB database.

This technology is also compatible with MongoDB forks, variants and cloud services, including but not limited to

Self-hosted MongoDB server software

• MongoDB Community Server
• MongoDB Enterprise Server
• TokuMX / Percona Server for Mongo

Cloud hosted MongoDB services (SaaS)

• MongoDB Atlas
• Amazon DocumentDB with MongoDB Compatibility
• Azure CosmosDB's API for MongoDB
• Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB for MongoDB

Magnus Box will search the PC for the system installed mongodump and mongo shell binaries. If your binaries are installed in a normal system location, Magnus Box will find and use the most recent available binary. If you have special requirements, or if Magnus Box is unable to automatically detect the binary path, you can override the binary path to use a custom mongodump and mongo shell binary.

Connection details should be set before picking databases for backup. Enter your MongoDB connection details in the lower part of the window.

Magnus Box supports connecting to MongoDB in different ways:

Direct connection

• Enter a hostname and port for the MongoDB server (mongod / mongos). The default port is 27017.

Direct connection through SSH tunnel

• Magnus Box will open an SSH tunnel to the remote server, and then run the locally installed mongodump binary against the forwarded port connection. The use of SSH as a transport layer is independent of whether SSL is also enabled (described below).

Replica set

• You must specify the name of the replica set (e.g. rs0)
• Add the hostname and port for each of the replica set members that are reachable from the Magnus Box device.
• Add the hostname and port for each of the replica set members that are reachable from the Magnus Box device.
  
  Primary - Magnus Box will attempt to back up from the primary. If the primary server is unreachable, the backup job will fail.
  Primary preferred - Magnus Box will attempt to back up from the primary, but will back up from the secondary if the primary is unreachable.
  Secondary - Magnus Box will attempt to back up from the secondary. If the secondary server is unreachable, the backup job will fail.
  Secondary preferred - Magnus Box will attempt to back up from the secondary, but will back up from the primary if the secondary is unreachable.
  Nearest - This option will back up data from the server in the replica set that has the lowest latency (ping) to the Magnus Box device.

Magnus Box supports the following transport layers:

• Plain
• SSL (TLS) - If your MongoDB server is using self-signed certificates, you can choose whether to trust an invalid SSL certificate from the MongoDB server.

Magnus Box supports the following authentication mechanisms:

• Unauthenticated
• Username/password (SCRAM)
  You must specify the authentication database for looking up the credentials inside MongoDB. The default authentication database is admin.
• Client certificates (MONGODB-X509)
  - This option is only available if the MongoDB server connection is going over an SSL (TLS) transport layer.
  - To use this feature, you should have a .pem file that contains the client SSL (TLS) certificate, intermediates, and private key in text X.509 format.
  - A private key password is optionally supported.

Other authentication mechanisms are not currently supported in Magnus Box (e.g. neither Kerberos / LDAP when using MongoDB Enterprise; nor, custom authentication mechanisms used by MongoDB software variants).

Magnus Box can backup a MongoDB replica set with a consistent point-in-time snapshot.

Magnus Box can back up a sharded MongoDB cluster, but depending on your MongoDB server version, there are some limitations:

• In MongoDB 4.2 and later, the backup may not be point-in-time consistent, unless writes are temporarily suspended to the MongoDB cluster (e.g. by running custom Before and After commands on the Magnus Box Protected Item configuration).
• If you are using a variant MongoDB engine (e.g. Amazon DocumentDB or Azure CosmosDB), different consistency guarantees may apply to sharded backups. You should check with your vendor for additional information.

To back up a sharded cluster in Magnus Box, enter the mongos front-end server in the Magnus Box connection details.

When backing up from a mongos server, Magnus Box cannot make use of the "read preference" selection as data is proxied through mongos. The backup will read from the primary replica set member of each shard replica set.

Use the plus button on the right to open a database browser, allowing you to select individual MongoDB databases for backup.

Magnus Box will back up all MongoDB collections within the selected MongoDB databases.

Magnus Box's MongoDB Protected Item type produces a .bson file for each selected MongoDB database. You can restore all databases, or selected databases only.

When restoring, you can choose to either

• restore back to a .bson files on disk, and then import them into your MongoDB server; or
• you can use the Program Input restore type to pipe the restore data directly back into your MongoDB server