Introducing Multi-Cloud Clusters on MongoDB Atlas

One of the core pillars of MongoDB is the freedom to run anywhere. Since 2017, organizations have been able to use MongoDB Atlas, our fully managed global cloud database, across 70+ regions on the cloud provider of their choice: AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. We’re increasingly seeing customers run independent workloads on different clouds — a common practice among enterprises with different applications and business units. However, we believe the real power of multi-cloud applications is yet to be realized in our industry.

So today, I’m proud to announce that multi-cloud clusters are generally available on MongoDB Atlas! With this groundbreaking capability, customers can distribute their data in a single cluster across multiple public clouds simultaneously, or move workloads seamlessly between them. Data — traditionally the hardest piece of an application stack to move — is now the easiest.

A New Multi-Cloud Paradigm

More organizations are moving towards a multi-cloud model, and they want the freedom and flexibility to use the best of each cloud provider for any and every application. The question is how engineering teams can do this efficiently and deliberately while dealing with challenges such as incompatible operations and the effects of data gravity.

With multi-cloud clusters on MongoDB Atlas, customers can realize the benefits of a multi-cloud strategy with true data portability and a simplified management experience. Developers no longer have to deal with manual data replication, and businesses can focus their technical resources on building differentiated software.

This opens up a whole new set of possibilities that were previously difficult ― if not impossible ― to achieve, from being able to use best-of-breed services across multiple platforms to data mobility and cross-cloud resiliency.

Use best-in-class technology across multiple clouds in parallel

Developer productivity is critical to a company’s success, and CTOs know that enabling their teams to choose the best technology available is a major contributing factor. With MongoDB Atlas, developers get more freedom in deciding what building blocks to use, regardless of which cloud is storing application data.

Some examples of popular cloud services that our customers like to use include AWS Lambda, Google Cloud AI Platform, and Azure Cognitive Services. With multi-cloud clusters, developers can now run operational and analytical workloads using different cloud tools on the same dataset, with no manual data replication required.

Migrate workloads across cloud environments seamlessly

Data mobility is another reason companies want a multi-cloud strategy. The world is constantly changing, and businesses never know if, or how, their cloud requirements are going to change. They may face mergers and acquisitions, be subject to new regulatory controls for data portability, find themselves in direct competition with a cloud provider, or find significant cost savings on another platform.

With MongoDB Atlas, organizations can future-proof their applications and have the option to move them from one cloud to another if needed, without undergoing a costly data migration. Our built-in automation seamlessly handles cross-cloud data replication on a rolling basis so applications stay online and available to end-users.

Improve high availability with cross-cloud redundancy

Any business with a mission-critical or user-facing application knows that downtime is unacceptable. Cloud disruptions vary in severity, from temporary capacity constraints to full-blown outages, and organizations need to mitigate as much risk as possible. By distributing data across multiple clouds, they can improve high availability and application resiliency without sacrificing latency. MongoDB Atlas extends the number of locations available by allowing users to choose from any of the nearly 80 regions available (with more coming) across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud — the widest selection of any cloud database on the market.

This is particularly relevant for businesses that must comply with data sovereignty requirements, but have limited deployment options due to sparse regional coverage on their primary cloud provider. In some cases, only one in-country region is available, leaving users especially vulnerable to disruptions in cloud service. For example, AWS and Google Cloud each offer only one region in Canada. With multi-cloud clusters, organizations can take advantage of both regions, and add additional nodes in the Azure Toronto and Quebec City regions for extra fault tolerance. With MongoDB Atlas, customers no longer need to make a trade-off between availability and compliance.

Reach more users with flexible deployment options

In order to deliver a world-class application experience, organizations must at a minimum meet end-user requirements for their products and services. For SaaS providers and B2C businesses, this may include cloud provider preferences or regional availability.

While each of the cloud providers offer a large and growing list of regions globally, their data centers are still heavily concentrated in the USA, Europe, and eastern Asia. If multinational enterprises want to reach local users in other areas, they may not always find coverage on a single cloud. For example, AWS is the only provider to offer a cloud region in Bahrain, Azure Oslo is the only option in Norway, and only Google Cloud has data centers in Indonesia. To capture more global market share, companies may need a multi-cloud strategy to meet customers where they are.

An Integrated, More Secure Cloud Data Platform

MongoDB has consistently delivered innovations in the data management experience, including automated data tiering with Atlas Online Archive, integrated full-text search with Atlas Search, and Client-Side Field Level Encryption (FLE) for some of the strongest levels of data privacy available today.

Client-Side FLE currently works with AWS Key Management Service (KMS), and will soon offer beta support for Azure Key Vault and Google Cloud KMS. With this expansion, it will be easier for organizations to further enhance the privacy and security of sensitive and regulated workloads across all major public cloud platforms.

Multi-Cloud Data Management Made Easy

Multi-cloud distribution can be enabled for both new and existing clusters starting today via the Atlas UI. Multi-cloud clusters come with all the features that our customers know and love, including built-in security defaults, fully managed backup and restores, automated patches and upgrades, intelligent performance advice, and more. While multi-cloud clusters are generally available, we are planning on releasing more capabilities in the coming months to deliver even more value to you.

Whether you’re a startup just getting off the ground or a global enterprise in the midst of a multi-year cloud transformation initiative, our multi-cloud database solution abstracts away the toughest roadblock to unlocking your multi-cloud strategy.

When your data can travel across clouds, there’s no limit to what you can build. Let us know where multi-cloud clusters on MongoDB Atlas take you - or tell us what you need to get there.