MongoDB Atlas Disaster Recovery Planning

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Disaster recovery planning is a crucial aspect of managing cloud resources and ensuring data durability and high availability. Pulumi provides a way to define and deploy cloud infrastructure with code, which can be particularly helpful for creating and managing disaster recovery solutions.

For MongoDB Atlas, disaster recovery planning typically involves considerations such as backup scheduling, cross-region replication, and auditing to ensure compliance and resilience. Pulumi's `mongodbatlas` package allows you to manage various MongoDB Atlas resources, including clusters, backups, and network settings, which are all important for a robust disaster recovery plan.

Let's create a Python Pulumi program that sets up a MongoDB Atlas Cluster with Point-In-Time Restore (PITR) enabled, backups scheduled, and auditing configured, all of which contribute to a solid disaster recovery strategy.

Below is a program that demonstrates how to set up a MongoDB Atlas Cluster with these disaster recovery features:

1. A MongoDB Atlas Cluster with PITR enabled.
2. A Cloud Backup Schedule to define when backups should occur.
3. Auditing setup to ensure all access and operations are trackable for security and compliance.

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_mongodbatlas as mongodbatlas

# Assume the MongoDB Atlas Project ID is already available in your context
# For the sake of this example, I'm hardcoding it, but in a real-world scenario,
# you should fetch it from your Pulumi configuration or as an output from another resource.
project_id = "your-atlas-project-id"

# Create a MongoDB Atlas cluster with PITR (Point-In-Time Restore) enabled.
# PITR allows you to restore data from a specific moment in the past, which is crucial for recovery.
cluster = mongodbatlas.Cluster("my-cluster",
    project_id=project_id,
    provider_name="AWS",  # Specify your cloud provider, e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure
    provider_region_name="us-east-1",  # Choose a region that supports your disaster recovery strategy
    provider_instance_size_name="M10",  # Choose the instance size as per your requirement
    backup_enabled=True,  # Enable backups
    pit_enabled=True,  # Enable Point-In-Time recovery
    disk_size_gb=10,  # Set disk size
    mongo_db_major_version="4.4",  # Specify the MongoDB version
    provider_disk_iops=100,  # Set disk IOPS
    replication_specs=[{  # Define replication specifics for disaster recovery across regions
        "region_configs": [
            {
                "region_name": "us-east-1",
                "electable_nodes": 3,
                "priority": 7
            },
            {
                "region_name": "us-west-2",
                "electable_nodes": 2,
                "priority": 6
            }
        ]
    }]
)

# Set up a cloud backup schedule for the cluster
backup_schedule = mongodbatlas.CloudBackupSchedule("my-backup-schedule",
    project_id=project_id,
    cluster_name=cluster.name,
    reference_hour_of_day=3,  # Backup starting at 3 AM
    reference_minute_of_hour=30,  # Backup starting at 30 minutes into the hour
    update_snapshots=True,  # Ensure snapshots are updated according to this schedule
    policy_item_daily={
        "frequency_interval": 1,  # Daily backups
        "frequency_type": "daily",
        "retention_unit": "days",
        "retention_value": 7  # Retain for 7 days
    },
    policy_item_weeklies=[{
        "frequency_interval": 1,
        "frequency_type": "weekly",
        "retention_unit": "weeks",
        "retention_value": 4  # Retain weekly backups for 4 weeks
    }]
)

# Enable auditing for the project to keep track of activity for disaster recovery compliance
auditing = mongodbatlas.Auditing("my-auditing",
    project_id=project_id,
    enabled=True,
    audit_filter="{ 'atype': { '$in': ['authenticate', 'createIndex', 'dropIndex', 'createUser', 'dropUser'] } }"  # Filter for specific types of audit events
)

# Export the cluster name and identifiers
pulumi.export("cluster_name", cluster.name)
pulumi.export("backup_schedule_id", backup_schedule._id)
pulumi.export("auditing_id", auditing._id)
```

In this program, we:

- Instantiate a `mongodbatlas.Cluster` resource with PITR enabled. This resource represents a MongoDB Atlas cluster, and by enabling PITR, we can recover from a specific time in case of data loss.
- Set up a `mongodbatlas.CloudBackupSchedule` to define the cadence and retention period of our backups. This is important to ensure that we have frequent and reliable backups to restore from in case of disaster.
- Set up `mongodbatlas.Auditing` to enable auditing on our MongoDB Atlas project. This captures all actions taken on the cluster, which can be invaluable for post-incident analysis or for meeting regulatory compliance requirements.

This Pulumi program helps you proactively create a disaster recovery setup for a MongoDB Atlas Cluster. While this code focuses on cluster creation, backup scheduling, and auditing, you may need to consider other aspects like network peering, access roles, and alert settings for a comprehensive disaster recovery plan.

If you would like to expand upon this basic setup or have other scenarios in mind, feel free to adapt the above code or explore other [MongoDB Atlas resources provided by Pulumi](https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/mongodbatlas/api-docs/).