Using Amazon DocumentDB elastic clusters - Amazon DocumentDB
Elastic cluster use casesAdvantages of elastic clustersRegion and version availabilityLimitations
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Using Amazon DocumentDB elastic clusters

Amazon DocumentDB elastic clusters support workloads with millions of reads/writes per second and petabytes of storage capacity. Elastic clusters also simplify how developers interact with Amazon DocumentDB by eliminating the need to choose, manage or upgrade instances.

Amazon DocumentDB elastic clusters were created to:

  • Provide a solution for customers looking for a database that provides virtually limitless scale with rich query capabilities and MongoDB API compatibility.

  • Give customers higher connection limits, and to reduce downtime from patching.

  • Continue investing in a cloud-native, elastic, and class leading architecture for JSON workloads.

Topics

Elastic cluster use cases

Document databases are useful for workloads that require a flexible schema for fast, iterative development. For example Amazon DocumentDB use cases, see Document Database Use Cases.

The following are some examples of use cases for which elastic clusters can provide significant advantages:

User profiles

Because document databases have a flexible schema, they can store documents that have different attributes and data values at scale. Elastic clusters are a practical solution to online profiles in which different users provide different types of information. Suppose that your applications support hundreds of millions of user profiles. You can use elastic clusters to support such applications because they can be scaled up and out to support millions of writes and reads to these user profiles. You can also scale down for off-peak hours to reduce cost.

Content management and historical records

To effectively manage content, you must be able to collect and aggregate content from a variety of sources, and then deliver it to the customer. Due to their flexible schema, document databases are perfect for collecting and storing any type of data. You can use them to create and incorporate new types of content, including user-generated content such as images, comments, and videos. Over time, your database may require more storage. With elastic clusters, you can distribute your data over more storage volumes enabling you to store petabytes of data in a single cluster.

Advantages of elastic clusters

Amazon service integration

Amazon DocumentDB elastic clusters integrate with other Amazon services in the same way Amazon DocumentDB does:

  • Migration - You can use Amazon Database Migration Service (DMS) to migrate from MongoDB and other relational databases to Amazon DocumentDB elastic clusters.

  • Monitoring - You can monitor the health and performance of your elastic cluster using Amazon CloudWatch.

  • Security - You can set up authentication and authorization through Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM) to manage your elastic clusters and use Amazon VPC for secure VPC-only connections.

  • Data management - You can use Amazon Glue to import and export data from/to other Amazon services such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift and Amazon OpenSearch Service.

Elastic cluster region and version availability

Region availability

The following table shows the Amazon regions where Amazon DocumentDB elastic clusters are currently available and the endpoint for each region.

Region name Region Availability zones

US East (N. Virginia)

us-east-1

5

US East (Ohio)

us-east-2

3

US West (Oregon)

us-west-2

3

Asia Pacific (Singapore)

ap-southeast-1

3

Asia Pacific (Sydney)

ap-southeast-2

3

Asia Pacific (Tokyo)

ap-northeast-1

3

Europe (Frankfurt)

eu-central-1

3

Europe (Ireland)

eu-west-1

3

Version availability

Elastic clusters support the MongoDB 5.0-compatable wire protocol. For differences between DocumentDB 4.0 instance-based clusters and elastic clusters, see Functional differences between Amazon DocumentDB 4.0 and elastic clusters.

Limitations

Elastic cluster management

The following cluster management features and capabilities are not supported in this release:

  • Ability to create global clusters

  • Existing Amazon DocumentDB events and subscribing to events

  • Range sharding

  • Shard existing collection

  • Multi-field shard key

  • Change shard key

  • Point-in-time restore

  • Stop/start/reboot cluster

  • Cloning

  • Performance Insights

Note

For information about elastic cluster limits, see Amazon DocumentDB Quotas and Limits.

Query and write oOperations

The following query and write operation commands and capabilities are not supported in this release:

  • DDL commands during scaling operations

  • Profilier

  • Parameter groups

  • Amazon Config

  • Amazon Backup

  • Read replicas (no readPreference)

  • Ability to hint queries

Collection and index management

The following collection and index management features are not supported in this release:

  • Sparse indexes

  • TTL indexes

  • Geospatial indexes

  • Background index create

Administration and diagnostics

The following administration and diagnostic commands and capabilities are not supported in this release:

  • Amazon Secrets Manager

  • Role-based-access-control (RBAC) custom roles.

  • Ability to view explain query plans.

  • Administrative commands such as currentOp, killOp, and listSessions.

  • When connecting, write concern of 0 is not supported.

  • Changing subnets belonging to an VPC that is not currently assigned to an existing elastic cluster.

Opt-in features

The following Amazon DocumentDB opt-in features are not supported in this release:

  • ACID transactions

  • DDL/DML auditing

  • Change streams

  • Session commands

Tools and drivers

The following tools and drivers are not supported in this release:

  • Terraform

  • Amazon Cloud Development Kit (Amazon CDK)