MongoDB: Migrating a single database with zero downtime

Question

I have a replica set with multiple databases. One of the databases is consuming too much resource and I need to migrate it to a new replica set. The requirement is to perform this migration with zero downtime. Has anyone had similar experience, or can give pointers on how to do this?

Answer 1

So first of all you should never run mongodb as a single instance for production. At a minimum you should have 1 primary, 1 secondary and 1 arbiter.

Second, even with a replica set you will always have a bit of write downtime when you switch primaries, as writes are not possible during the election process. From the docs:

IMPORTANT Elections are essential for independent operation of a replica set; however, elections take time to complete. While an election is in process, the replica set has no primary and cannot accept writes. MongoDB avoids elections unless necessary.
Elections are going to occur when for example you bring down the primary to move it to a new server or virtual instance, or upgrade the database version (like going from 2.4 to 2.6).

You can keep downtime to a minimum with an existing replica set by setting the appropriate options to allow queries to run against secondaries. Again from the docs:

Maintaining availability during a failover. Use primaryPreferred if you want an application to read from the primary under normal circumstances, but to allow stale reads from secondaries in an emergency. This provides a “read-only mode” for your application during a failover.
This takes care of reads at least. Writes are best dealt with by having your application retry failed writes, or queue them up.

Regarding your standalone the documented procedures for converting to a replica set are well tested and can be completed very quickly with minimal downtime:
For more info!