Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) support for MongoDB server 3.6 end of life schedule

Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) is a fast, scalable, highly available, and fully managed document database service that supports MongoDB workloads. You can use the same MongoDB 3.6 and 4.0 application code, drivers, and tools to run, manage, and scale workloads on Amazon DocumentDB without worrying about managing the underlying infrastructure. As a document database, Amazon DocumentDB makes it easy to store, query, and index JSON data.

As many MongoDB users are aware, the end of life (EOL) date for MongoDB server version 3.6 is rapidly approaching—April 30, 2021. End of life for a software typically means that although the software will continue to operate, major feature releases, technical support, requests for enhancements, bug fixes, and official training for the software may no longer be provided or supported.

With EOL for MongoDB server 3.6 approaching, you may be looking to upgrade your MongoDB server version to MongoDB 4.0 or later, for example by using MongoDB Atlas on AWS. By upgrading, you can take advantage of all new MongoDB features including multi-document ACID transactions, client-side encryption, on-demand materialized views, major enhancements in query expressivity and the aggregation pipeline, refinable shard keys, hedged reads, and more. You can learn more in the MongoDB documentation.

Depending on your workload, migrating to Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) may be the right solution and will provide the benefits of a fully managed and highly scalable document database service. Amazon DocumentDB interacts with the Apache 2.0 open-source MongoDB 3.6 and 4.0 APIs. As a result, you can use the same MongoDB drivers, applications, and tools with Amazon DocumentDB with little or no changes. After you migrate to Amazon DocumentDB, you don’t need to worry about database management tasks, such as hardware provisioning, patching, setup, configuration, backups, or scaling.

Additionally, Amazon DocumentDB is designed from the ground up and purpose built for the cloud. It doesn’t follow the same support lifecycles as MongoDB, and the MongoDB server EOL schedule doesn’t apply to Amazon DocumentDB. You can continue to run your existing Amazon DocumentDB engine version 3.6 or 4.0 without losing functionality in your applications or support from AWS.

To help you prepare for the MongoDB EOL date, we have several resources available that walk you through migrating your MongoDB 3.6 workload to Amazon DocumentDB depending on your approach.

Offline migration

In the post Migrate from MongoDB to Amazon DocumentDB using the offline method, we walk you through how to perform an offline migration from MongoDB to Amazon DocumentDB using the Amazon DocumentDB Index Tool and the mongodump and mongorestore tools. The offline method is the simplest migration approach, but it also incurs relatively higher downtime for your cluster.

Online migration

For migrations that need minimal downtime for you cluster, the online approach uses AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to perform a full load of data from your source MongoDB deployment to your Amazon DocumentDB cluster. It then switches to change data capture (CDC) mode to replicate changes.

AWS DMS supports MongoDB versions 3.x and 4.0 as a database source. Even if you continue to use MongoDB version 3.6 past the EOL date, AWS DMS allows you to migrate from that MongoDB source to many of the most popular databases as a target for data replication, including Amazon DocumentDB, with minimal downtime.

Hybrid migration

The hybrid approach combines the speed of the offline approach and the ability to minimize downtime with the online approach. This method is ideal for workloads with storage volume over 10 TB because you can expedite the initial load time by using multiple threads during the restore process. It uses the mongodump and mongorestore tools to migrate your data from your source MongoDB deployment to your Amazon DocumentDB cluster. It then uses AWS DMS in CDC mode to replicate changes. The hybrid approach balances migration speed and downtime, but it’s the most complex of the three approaches.

Summary

Amazon DocumentDB does not follow the same support lifecycles as MongoDB, and the end of life (EOL) date for MongoDB server version 3.6 on April 30, 2021 does not apply to Amazon DocumentDB. You can reach out to your AWS account team, AWS support, or the AWS forums with questions about migrating from MongoDB 3.6 or for help architecting a solution.

About the author

Cody Allen is a Senior DocumentDB Specialist Solutions Architect based out of Texas. He is passionate about working side by side with customers to solve complex problems, and supporting teammates through mentorship and knowledge transfer. He has spent his career deploying and managing systems, softwares, and infrastructure for B2B SaaS providers, materiel and logistics suppliers, the U.S Air Force, and other government agencies domestic and international.