I had to search a lot before figuring out a proper way to install and configure a production ready standalone MongoDB installation in AWS EC2 instance. I am sharing my learnings and hope it is useful for others.

Install MongoDB Community Edition

Prior to installation; please refer deploy ec2 in a private subnet & securely communicate with internet to properply setup your ec2 instance.

Create a /etc/yum.repos.d/mongodb-org-4.4.repo file so that you can install MongoDB directly using yum:

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[mongodb-org-4.4]
name=MongoDB Repository
baseurl=https://repo.mongodb.org/yum/amazon/2/mongodb-org/4.4/x86_64/
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.4.asc

To install the latest stable version of MongoDB, issue the following command:

$ sudo yum install -y mongodb-org

Issue below command to verify whether MongoDB is installed properly

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$ which mongo     # it should print 

/usr/bin/mongo

Configure EC2 Instance

In my opinion, it will be good to add 2 additional EBS volumes apart from default root volume for MongoDB

  1. Data volume: Size: X GB (according to your size estimation)
  2. Log volume: Recommended size is 1/10th of data volume

Note:- A separate volume for journal can also be attached by creating a symbolic link to point the journal directory to the attached volume as

MongoDB creates a subdirectory named journal under the dbPath directory

Size of EBS volumes can be changed later also.

Read detailed steps for Make an Amazon EBS volume available for use.. Mount each volume as below:

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# create below directories
$ sudo mkdir /data
$ sudo mkdir /log

# mount volumes appropriately
$ sudo mount -t xfs /dev/sdf /data
$ sudo mount -t xfs /dev/sdh /log

# set appropriate ownership
$ sudo chown mongod:mongod /data
$ sudo chown mongod:mongod /log/

Add below content using command $ sudo vi /etc/fstab

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/dev/sdf /data    xfs defaults,auto,noatime,noexec 0 0
/dev/sdh /log     xfs defaults,auto,noatime,noexec 0 0

I would also recommend to add swap space of atleast 4GB. Run below commands to create the swap space.

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$ sudo dd if=/dev/xvda1 of=/swapfile bs=4096 count=488400

$ sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

$ sudo mkswap /swapfile

$ sudo swapon /swapfile

$ sudo swapon -s

$ sudo vi /etc/fstab

Add below contents:

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/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0

Run command $ sudo swapon --show to verify swap is active.

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# Output will be similar as below

NAME      TYPE  SIZE   USED PRIO
/swapfile file 1024M 507.4M   -1

Configure ulimit settings

Update the limits.conf file with recommended values:

$ sudo vi /etc/security/limits.conf

Add below content:

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* soft nofile 64000
* hard nofile 64000
* soft nproc 64000
* hard nproc 64000

This step might require to reboot the instance.

Verify the values by issuing the command $ ulimit -a

Disable Transparent Huge Pages (THP)

I would recommend to follow steps mentioned at MongoDB official documentation.

Configure Log Rotation

Linux logrotate utility allows automatic rotation, compression and removal of log files. Create a file /etc/logrotate.d/mongodb and add below contents:

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/log/*log {
    hourly
    rotate 10
    size 50M
    copytruncate
    missingok
    notifempty
    compress
    delaycompress
    sharedscripts
}

Then create a cron job to run hourly (run as per your need)

$ crontab -e

Add below content:

0 * * * * sudo /usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/mongodb

MongoDB Configuration

Update MongoDB configuration:

$ sudo vi /etc/mongod.conf

Change value of port other than the default 27017 and also update the security group settings in aws accordingly.

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# network interfaces
net:
  port: 31012

Update path of pid file.

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# how the process runs
processManagement:
  fork: true  # fork and run in background
  pidFilePath: /home/mongod/mongod.pid  # location of pidfile

Also, update data and log paths:

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# where to write logging data.
systemLog:
  destination: file
  logAppend: true
  path: /log/mongod.log

# Where and how to store data.
storage:
  dbPath: /data
  journal:
    enabled: true

MongoDB User

Start mongodb user by using command $ mongod --config /etc/mongod.conf

Connect to mongodb by using command $ mongo --port <configured port value>

Create a root user:

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use admin

db.createUser({ user: "adminUser", pwd: "<strong password>", roles: ["root"] })

I would strongly recommend to go through the section Built-In Roles

Update /etc/mongod.conf file with

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security:
  authorization: enabled

Restart the mongod process and try to connect using command:

$ mongo --port <port value> -u adminUser --authenticationDatabase admin

Conclusion

I have tried to document all the steps based on my learnings during a standalone installation. I will write another blog for MongoDB Installation with Replication setup. I hope you enjoyed reading this and find it helpful. I sincerely request for your feedback. You can follow me on twitter @lifeClicks25.