Monitoring is an essential part of all database administration. A solid understanding of MongoDB Monitoring Tools will allow you to assess the state of your database and keep your deployment running smoothly.
Unlike SQL database systems, the MongoDB database is built on a document system that allows you to seamlessly index, query, and sort data. In a nutshell, it stores data in JSON-like documents rather than tables. It is a distributed database with dynamic schemas for unstructured data, high availability, and horizontal scaling built-in. Furthermore, it is completely free to use.
What is MongoDB?
MongoDB is an open-source NoSQL-based DBMS, which has a free version too. MongoDB stores and retrieves data as a key-value pair but the value part is stored as a document in JSON/XML format. Hence you can store a lot of details about an object in its document, and similar objects can have different length documents( i.e. some can have more properties than others) associated with them.
Due to its internal structure, MongoDB is mostly used for CMS systems, blogging platforms, real-time analytics & e-commerce applications.
MongoDB indexes, queries, and processes documents instead of singular column values, and is inherently distributed in nature.
Key Features of MongoDB
When compared to other traditional databases, MongoDB has a number of distinguishing features that make it a superior solution. Some of these characteristics are discussed in greater detail below:
Fewer Schemas in a Database: A Schema-Less Database allows you to store different types of Documents in a single Collection (the equivalent of a table). An Indexed Document: Every field in a MongoDB Database Document is indexed with Primary and Secondary Indices, which makes it easier to retrieve information from the data pool. Scalability: A large amount of data is partitioned into data chunks using the Shard Key, and these data chunks are evenly distributed across Shards that span many Physical Servers. Replication: MongoDB ensures high data availability by replicating the data and sending it to multiple servers so that if one fails, the data can still be retrieved from another.
What is the need for MongoDB Monitoring Tools?
Although MongoDB has built-in scaling, security, and fault tolerance; it’s better to continuously monitor your MongoDB infrastructure to proactively mitigate risks and ensure smooth functioning.
Another important aspect of database administration is advanced capacity planning for your application and monitoring your cluster’s health and performance.
Monitoring MongoDB databases allows you to:-
Better understand your databases and how they work together, realize if any design improvements are required Optimize resources utilization and reduce costs Detect and correct any anomalies, undesired boundary conditions, presence of abnormal behavior, and performance issues Mitigate risks and handle attacks if any Comply with standard security/data protection/governance recommendations and statutory obligations.
Typically you would want to measure and track indicators like:-
Key performance indicators and variables Software and hardware metrics Cluster’s operations and connections metrics Network and bandwidth usage Metrics related to your infrastructure stack
Simplify MongoDB ETL Using Hevo’s No-code Data Pipeline
Hevo Data is a No-code Data Pipeline that offers a fully managed solution to set up Data Integration for 100+ Data Sources and will let you directly load data from sources like MongoDB to a Data Warehouse or the Destination of your choice. It will automate your data flow in minutes without writing any line of code. Its fault-tolerant architecture makes sure that your data is secure and consistent. Hevo provides you with a truly efficient and fully automated solution to manage data in real-time and always have analysis-ready data.
Let’s look at some of the salient features of Hevo:
Fully Managed: It requires no management and maintenance as Hevo is a fully automated platform.
Data Transformation: It provides a simple interface to perfect, modify, and enrich the data you want to transfer.
Real-Time: Hevo offers real-time data migration. So, your data is always ready for analysis.
Schema Management: Hevo can automatically detect the schema of the incoming data and map it to the destination schema.
Connectors: Hevo supports 100+ Integrations to SaaS platforms FTP/SFTP, Files, Databases, BI tools, and Native REST API & Webhooks Connectors. It supports various destinations including Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, Firebolt, Data Warehouses; Amazon S3 Data Lakes; Databricks; MySQL, SQL Server, TokuDB, MongoDB, PostgreSQL Databases to name a few.
Secure: Hevo has a fault-tolerant architecture that ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
Hevo Is Built To Scale: As the number of sources and the volume of your data grows, Hevo scales horizontally, handling millions of records per minute with very little latency.
Live Monitoring: Advanced monitoring gives you a one-stop view to watch all the activities that occur within Data Pipelines.
Live Support: Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.
What are Some Modern and Relevant MongoDB Monitoring Tools?
We will discuss the key differentiators between available options. Also, we will try to discuss use cases where a typical solution fits best.
If you’re not sure how big your infrastructure and MongoDB cluster will grow, you must choose a tool that works and scales well with single as well as multiple installations.
If you’re sensitive to performance, throughput, and outages, then tools that additionally give you cloud resource monitoring and infrastructure usage statistics, will be useful for you. If performance is of prime concern, then APM Tools (Application Performance Monitoring) is what you should be using.
1. MongoDB’s Free Cloud Monitoring Tool
To enable real-time reporting of your running MongoDb instance, MongoDB offers “Free Cloud monitoring” for standalone or replica sets.
Just call db.enableFreeMonitoring() to enable it.
MongoDB also provides certain functions like mongostat and mongostop, bundled with its distribution binaries, for this purpose.
mongostat returns the latest information about the database operations by type (e.g. insert, query, update, delete, etc.); it’s useful incapacity planning. mongotop tracks and reports the current read and write activity of a MongoDB instance, it’s useful in monitoring resource usage and database activity.
There are specific commands that give you a lot more details about the processes happening in your databases(s), like server-status/collStats/dbStats/replSetGetStatus, etc. If you have programming and designing resources with you, you can directly use the above functions to create your reports/visualizations.
These tools will give you fine-grained control over your measures, and help eliminate noise( unimportant metrics) to let you focus on only those metrics that matter for your application.
2. MongoDB Atlas’s Performance Panel
MongoDB Atlas is a SAAS offering by MongoDB, which runs your databases on the cloud and takes care of all administration/configuration/scaling tasks.
MongoDB Atlas provides tools like Performance Panel, Performance Advisor, and Query Profiler, to monitor your databases running in this cloud service.
It has a “Metrics” tab that shows visualizations related to process metrics, hardware metrics, and database metrics. These metrics are refreshed every 20 minutes to give you the latest information. Moreover, you can adjust certain factors about the visualizations being shown, like Granularity/Zoom level/Display Annotations/Show Counters/Add or Toggle Charts, etc.
While viewing these charts you can view its detailed description, zoom in, expand it, View statistics at a particular time and move the chart. So, delving into deeper details is easy and possible with just a few clicks.
MongoDB Atlas also allows you to view real-time metrics by clicking the View Monitoring button. You can view the real-time performance panel to view CPU, Disk Util, and Sys Mem/Connections, Network In, Network Out/Reads & Writes/Query Execution Times/Slow queries /Hottest collections, etc. You can view additional details about each metric, e.g. CPU time slices used by modules such as user, kernel, iowait, steal, etc.
So, this lets you easily decide which collections/instances to give more resources to. Since this is a tool developed by MongoDB itself, it’s very accurate and easy to use. If you’re using MongoDB Atlas, these tools can be a good option.
Next, we will discuss some 3rd party tools recommended by MongoDB.
3. PandoraFMS MongoDB-Monitoring Plugin
Pandora FMS provides the PandoraFMS-MongoDB-monitoring plugin to monitor the main variables and configuration parameters of your MongoDB.
Typically, users first install Pandora FMS Open Source, and then this MongoDB-monitoring plugin. Pandora FMS will take on the responsibility of managing servers/applications/network communications in general. The MongoDB-monitoring plugin will take on the responsibility of communicating with and monitoring your MongoDB instances.
The MongoDB-monitoring plugin mostly uses mongostat internally to gather statistical information, for each of your MongoDB instances, as entered in its configuration file.
Pandora MongoDB-monitoring plugin sends alerts to subscribed users, which warn of unusual activity/crossed thresholds/average loads etc. Pandora MongoDB-monitoring plugin running over Pandora FMS provides you with the first level of automation for monitoring MongoDB instances.
Let’s now look at some advanced and more evolved options.
4. New Relic’s MongoDB Quickstart
New Relic’s MongoDB quickstart is a visual tool that provides multiple Dashboards to monitor various aspects of your MongoDB cluster. Each of these dashboards is customizable and provides insights into key metrics like Disk and CPU usage, RAM availability, Slow queries Operation execution times, etc. This helps you focus on your business logic and relieves you of many administrative and monitoring tasks.
MongoDB quickstart offers advanced features like Custom queries and Charts, Application performance insights, and metrics about your underlying infrastructure. It can be configured to monitor either a full MongoDB cluster as well as a standalone MongoDB instance. All communication between your MongoDB instances and this tool can be encrypted for added security.
You can label your metrics as per your choice, introduce filters to narrow down databases and parameter value ranges that need to be monitored, and specify intervals after which new data should be fetched.
New Relic’s MongoDB quickstart will also record all Queries run, and capture all command-line options and runtime-configured parameters from each host in the cluster. Lastly, we discuss one of the most advanced tools that are a part of a large set of monitoring and performance enhancement tools.
5. SolarWinds Database Performance Monitor(DPM)
Solarwinds is one of the world’s leading companies in the Monitoring and Management tools space. They offer tools for monitoring Networks, Systems, Databases, Applications Security, etc. SolarWinds Database Performance Monitor works well for on-premises, hybrid, as well as cloud-based databases.
SolarWinds DPM not only tracks your important metrics for you but also provides a centralized view of latency/throughput/errors and more, across your MongoDB ecosystem in real-time, through its automated profiling analysis.
DPM can give you instant advice on whether to change certain parameters and sends alerts to subscribed users. With its patented Adaptive Fault Detection technology, it can detect faults/serious aberrations quickly, and warn you before they cause more damage.
To add some icing to the cake, DPM offers you a Best Practices guidance section too, where they advise some best practices based on your workloads and usage history.
Expert advice is available for your database, OS, and Replication configuration. This tool will enable you to get a deeper understanding of your MongoDB environment and help you identify crucial metrics. It’s the tool to use if you expect your MongoDB cluster to grow and get more complex.
Since Solarwinds are experts in this domain, and they have a lot of experience with similar tools under their product umbrella, you can rely on their DPM to provide value for money.
6. MongoDB Monitoring Tool: Site24x7
Site24x7’s cloud-based technology provides a comprehensive set of application and server monitoring services. While Site24x7 can monitor several settings, its simple plugin installation allows you to monitor MongoDB alongside any other service you want.
Provides detailed insight into performance measures like:
Connections available: the total number of unused connections in your MongoDB server that can be used by new clients. Heap usage: the total amount of heap space consumed by MongoDB databases in bytes. The entire number of active connections in the MongoDB database is counted as current connections. Total open cursors: detects the total number of cursors in your MongoDB infrastructure that are currently open.
When invoiced annually, Site24x7 APM starts at $35.00 (£25.40) per month and includes a variety of additional capabilities such as enhanced log size, network interfaces, and applications. With a 30-day free trial, you can try Site24x7 for yourself.
7. MongoDB Monitoring Tool: Datadog
As an integration, Datadog provides an intelligent MongoDB monitoring tool that allows you to visualize key MongoDB metrics and connect their performance with that of other critical applications.
It gathers a variety of essential metrics from your MongoDB ecosystem as a whole. You can also utilize custom find, count, and aggregate queries to construct your own metrics.
The platform as a whole is designed to make database maintenance easier through automation and powerful visualizations or metrics that matter. The Datadog MongoDB integration may gather a variety of metrics, report on the status of certain events, and perform a variety of service checks on the database.
All of these data will auto-populate across the default dashboard after the agent is installed, highlighting insights like resource saturation, throughput, performance and faults, and the amount of queued jobs. This breakdown makes it simple to keep track of both MongoDB and the infrastructure that supports it in one location.
When invoiced annually, Datadog APM costs $31.00 (£22.49) and offers 15 months of search retention, 15 days of historical search and analysis, and 15 minutes of live search tracing. A free 14-day trial of Datadog for your MongoDB setup is available.
8. MongoDB Monitoring Tool: Dynatrace
MongoDB monitoring is available as part of Dynatrace’s IT system monitoring service. This cloud-based monitoring solution has a wide range of functions that cover most IT resources.
Dynatrace’s MongoDB monitoring tools start by locating your database instances. Because this detection process is ongoing, if you create a new instance, it will be automatically enrolled in the monitoring program.
The monitor detects all applications that access each MongoDB instance and displays access in real-time in the dashboard. These numbers are displayed as an aggregated summary before being analyzed in detail for each application. Dynatrace not only collects data to display on the screen, but it also saves those measurements so that they can be analyzed in the future.
Applications that use your databases are identified and added to an application dependency map. Like a Web crawler, Dynatrace builds up this map. It keeps track of how applications interact with one another and makes a record of it.
9. MongoDB Monitoring Tool: Ops View
Opsview is a system monitoring tool that, like some of the other products on this list, uses an expandable base model. One of these plug-ins provides access to Opsview’s MongoDB monitoring features. Opsview system add-ons are known as “opspacks.”
The MongoDB opspack is simple to set up and use. The number of distinct MongoDB factors that Opsview can track is quite astounding. It has a total of 29 properties that you can track in relation to your MongoDB system.
Transactional monitoring, database characteristics, and resource needs are the three kinds of MongoDB system monitors. These give you several perspectives on what goes into the database, what happens in the database, and what happens beneath the database.
MongoDB monitoring isn’t the only thing Opsview can do. Its library of opspacks allows it to track the performance of a large number of apps. Opsview will go through your system and identify all of the applications you’re using.
Conclusion
We have discussed some popular tools that help you attain KPI goals for availability, throughput, deployment frequency, reduced deploy failures, reduce mean time to detect/respond/recovery, and more.
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