Before you select the PowerStore model, storage media and capacity, and connectivity options, you must first understand the target MongoDB environment. There are many factors to consider that are not limited to the following:
- Understand the performance that is required by the database servers in terms of IOPS, latencies, and bandwidth.
- Know the expected workload types, such as a read-mostly workload, update-intensive workload, or a combination of several workload types.
- Consider the amount of data to keep and future data growth. After you perform a careful analysis against the dataset, you may factor the data-reduction savings into the calculated storage capacity requirements. The actual savings might vary because the type of data stored can dramatically affect the effectiveness of the data-reduction ratio. For example, the binary datatype is less compressible than the text datatype.
- Account for the number of database servers in a replica set. MongoDB uses replica sets to provide data redundancy and availability. Having multiple copies of data also increases the read capacity to clients in some cases.
- Plan to have extra copies of data for reporting, backup, or disaster recovery.
When deploying MongoDB directly on the PowerStore X appliance, it is important to consider the additional resources required for the application virtual machines. Depending on the scale of the MongoDB cluster, multiple appliances may be required for the virtual machines, even if a single appliance has sufficient storage capacity.
- It is recommended to distribute the servers evenly across all ESXi nodes on the appliances. Additionally, it is important to prepare for the possibility of an ESXi node failure and decide whether CPU and memory resources should be reserved on an ESXi node to maintain optimal performance for all hosts.
- It is not advisable to overcommit CPU and memory resources on PowerStore ESXi nodes in production or mission-critical environments. However, in test or development environments where performance guarantees are not a concern, this practice may be acceptable.
Review the MongoDB documentation to learn about other software and hardware requirements.
For sizing questions and planning for the PowerStore appliances, contact your Dell Technologies representative to discuss the requirements and access to a suite of analytic tools, such as LiveOptics and CloudIQ, that are designed to help gather and analyze workload and performance data in an existing environment.