FAQ: Replication and Replica Sets
On this page
- What kind of replication does MongoDB support?
- Does replication work over the Internet and WAN connections?
- Can MongoDB replicate over a "noisy" connection?
- Why use journaling if replication already provides data redundancy?
- What information do arbiters exchange with the rest of the replica set?
- Is it normal for replica set members to use different amounts of disk space?
- Can I rename a replica set?
This document answers common questions about replication in MongoDB. See also the Replication section in the manual, which provides an overview of replication including details on:
What kind of replication does MongoDB support?
MongoDB supports Replica sets, which can have up to 50 nodes.
Does replication work over the Internet and WAN connections?
Yes.
For example, a deployment may maintain a primary and secondary in an East-coast data center along with a secondary member for disaster recovery in a West-coast data center.
Can MongoDB replicate over a "noisy" connection?
Yes, but not without connection failures and the obvious latency.
Members of the set will attempt to reconnect to the other members of the set in response to networking flaps. This does not require administrator intervention. However, if the network connections among the nodes in the replica set are very slow, it might not be possible for the members of the node to keep up with the replication.
Why use journaling if replication already provides data redundancy?
Journaling facilitates faster crash recovery.
Journaling is particularly useful for protection against power failures, especially if your replica set resides in a single data center or power circuit.
When a replica set runs with journaling, you can safely restart
mongod instances without additional intervention.
Note
Journaling requires some resource overhead for write operations. Journaling has no effect on read performance, however.
Journaling is enabled by default on all 64-bit builds of MongoDB v2.0 and greater.
What information do arbiters exchange with the rest of the replica set?
Arbiters never receive the contents of a collection but do exchange the following data with the rest of the replica set:
Credentials used to authenticate the arbiter with the replica set. These exchanges are encrypted.
Replica set configuration data and voting data. This information is not encrypted. Only credential exchanges are encrypted.
If your MongoDB deployment uses TLS/SSL, then all communications between arbiters and the other members of the replica set are secure.
See the documentation for Configure mongod and mongos for TLS/SSL for
more information. As with all MongoDB components, run arbiters on secure
networks.
Is it normal for replica set members to use different amounts of disk space?
Yes.
Factors including: different oplog sizes, different levels of storage fragmentation, and MongoDB's data file pre-allocation can lead to some variation in storage utilization between nodes. Storage use disparities will be most pronounced when you add members at different times.
Can I rename a replica set?
Yes, unsharded replica sets can be renamed. This procedure requires downtime.
To learn how to rename your replica set, see Rename a Self-Managed Replica Set.
Before renaming a replica set, perform a full backup of your MongoDB deployment.