Config Database¶

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The config database supports sharded cluster operation. See the Sharding section of this manual for full documentation of sharded clusters.

Important

The schema of the config database is internal and may change between releases of MongoDB. The config database is not a dependable API, and users should not write data to the config database in the course of normal operation or maintenance.

To access the config database, connect to a mongos instance in a sharded cluster, and use the following helper:

use config

You can return a list of the collections, with the following helper:

show collections

The config database is mainly for internal use, and during normal operations you should never manually insert or store data in it. However, if you need to verify the write availability of a config server, you can insert a document into a test collection (after making sure that no collection of that name already exists):

Warning

Modification of the config database on a functioning system may lead to instability or inconsistent data sets. If you must modify the config database, use mongodump to create a full backup of the config database.

db.testConfigServerWriteAvail.insert( { a : 1 } )

If the operation succeeds, the config server is available to process writes.

Future releases of the server may include different collections in the config database, so be careful when selecting a name for your test collection.

Collections¶

config¶

config.changelog¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The changelog collection stores a document for each change to the metadata of a sharded collection.

Example

The following example displays a single record of a chunk split from a changelog collection:

{
 "_id" : "<hostname>-<timestamp>-<increment>",
 "server" : "<hostname><:port>",
 "clientAddr" : "127.0.0.1:63381",
 "time" : ISODate("2012-12-11T14:09:21.039Z"),
 "what" : "split",
 "ns" : "<database>.<collection>",
 "details" : {
    "before" : {
       "min" : {
          "<database>" : { $minKey : 1 }
       },
       "max" : {
          "<database>" : { $maxKey : 1 }
       },
       "lastmod" : Timestamp(1000, 0),
       "lastmodEpoch" : ObjectId("000000000000000000000000")
    },
    "left" : {
       "min" : {
          "<database>" : { $minKey : 1 }
       },
       "max" : {
          "<database>" : "<value>"
       },
       "lastmod" : Timestamp(1000, 1),
       "lastmodEpoch" : ObjectId(<...>)
    },
    "right" : {
       "min" : {
          "<database>" : "<value>"
       },
       "max" : {
          "<database>" : { $maxKey : 1 }
       },
       "lastmod" : Timestamp(1000, 2),
       "lastmodEpoch" : ObjectId("<...>")
    }
 }
}

Each document in the changelog collection contains the following fields:

config.changelog._id¶: The value of changelog._id is: <hostname>-<timestamp>-<increment>.

config.changelog.server¶: The hostname of the server that holds this data.

config.changelog.clientAddr¶: A string that holds the address of the client, a mongos instance that initiates this change.

config.changelog.time¶: A ISODate timestamp that reflects when the change occurred.

config.changelog.what¶

Reflects the type of change recorded. Possible values are:

dropCollection
dropCollection.start
dropDatabase
dropDatabase.start
moveChunk.start
moveChunk.commit
split
multi-split

config.changelog.ns¶: Namespace where the change occurred.

config.changelog.details¶: A document that contains additional details regarding the change. The structure of the details document depends on the type of change.

config.chunks¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The chunks collection stores a document for each chunk in the cluster. Consider the following example of a document for a chunk named records.pets-animal_\"cat\":

{
   "_id" : "mydb.foo-a_\"cat\"",
   "lastmod" : Timestamp(1000, 3),
   "lastmodEpoch" : ObjectId("5078407bd58b175c5c225fdc"),
   "ns" : "mydb.foo",
   "min" : {
         "animal" : "cat"
   },
   "max" : {
         "animal" : "dog"
   },
   "shard" : "shard0004"
}

These documents store the range of values for the shard key that describe the chunk in the min and max fields. Additionally the shard field identifies the shard in the cluster that “owns” the chunk.

config.collections¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The collections collection stores a document for each sharded collection in the cluster. Given a collection named pets in the records database, a document in the collections collection would resemble the following:

{
   "_id" : "records.pets",
   "lastmod" : ISODate("1970-01-16T15:00:58.107Z"),
   "dropped" : false,
   "key" : {
         "a" : 1
   },
   "unique" : false,
   "lastmodEpoch" : ObjectId("5078407bd58b175c5c225fdc")
}

config.databases¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The databases collection stores a document for each database in the cluster, and tracks if the database has sharding enabled. databases represents each database in a distinct document. When a databases have sharding enabled, the primary field holds the name of the primary shard.

{ "_id" : "admin", "partitioned" : false, "primary" : "config" }
{ "_id" : "mydb", "partitioned" : true, "primary" : "shard0000" }

config.lockpings¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The lockpings collection keeps track of the active components in the sharded cluster. Given a cluster with a mongos running on example.com:30000, the document in the lockpings collection would resemble:

{ "_id" : "example.com:30000:1350047994:16807", "ping" : ISODate("2012-10-12T18:32:54.892Z") }

config.locks¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The locks collection stores the distributed locks. The primary of the config server replica set takes a lock by inserting a document resembling the following into the locks collection.

{
   "_id" : "balancer",
   "state" : 2,
   "ts" : ObjectId("581178035b3b7dcb772022cd"),
   "who" : "ConfigServer:Balancer",
   "process" : "ConfigServer",
   "when" : ISODate("2016-10-27T03:44:03.007Z"),
   "why" : "CSRS Balancer"
}

Changed in version 3.4: As of version 3.4, the state field will always have a value 2 to prevent any legacy mongos instances from performing the balancing operation. The when field specifies the time when the config server member became the primary.

config.mongos¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The mongos collection stores a document for each mongos instance affiliated with the cluster. mongos instances send pings to all members of the cluster every 30 seconds so the cluster can verify that the mongos is active. The ping field shows the time of the last ping, while the up field reports the uptime of the mongos as of the last ping. The cluster maintains this collection for reporting purposes.

The following document shows the status of the mongos running on example.com:30000.

{ "_id" : "example.com:30000", "ping" : ISODate("2012-10-12T17:08:13.538Z"), "up" : 13699, "waiting" : true }

config.settings¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The settings collection holds the following sharding configuration settings:

Chunk size. To change chunk size, see Modify Chunk Size in a Sharded Cluster. The specified chunksize value is in megabytes.
Balancer status. To change status, see Disable the Balancer.
Autosplit. To enable or disable the autosplit flag, use the corresponding sh.enableAutoSplit() method or sh.disableAutoSplit() method.

The following is an example settings collection:

{ "_id" : "chunksize", "value" : 64 }
{ "_id" : "balancer", "stopped" : false }
{ "_id" : "autosplit", "enabled" : true }

config.shards¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The shards collection represents each shard in the cluster in a separate document, as in the following:

{ "_id" : "shard0000", "host" : "localhost:30000" }

If the shard is a replica set, the host field displays the name of the replica set, then a slash, then a comma-separated list of the hostnames of each member of the replica set, as in the following example:

{ "_id" : "shard0001", "host" : "shard0001/localhost:27018,localhost:27019,localhost:27020" }

If the shard has zones assigned, this document has a tags field, that holds an array of the zones to which it is assigned, as in the following example:

{ "_id" : "shard0002", "host" : "localhost:30002", "tags": [ "NYC" ] }

config.tags¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The tags collection holds documents for each zone range in the cluster. The documents in the tags collection resemble the following:

{
    "_id" : { "ns" : "records.users", "min" : { "zipcode" : "10001" } },
    "ns" : "records.users",
    "min" : { "zipcode" : "10001" },
    "max" : { "zipcode" : "10281" },
    "tag" : "NYC"
}

config.version¶

Internal MongoDB Metadata

The config database is internal: applications and administrators should not modify or depend upon its content in the course of normal operation.

The version collection holds the current metadata version number. This collection contains only one document:

To access the version collection you must use the db.getCollection() method. For example, to display the collection’s document:

mongos> db.getCollection("version").find()
{ "_id" : 1, "version" : 3 }

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