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Stop using MongoDB as your default NoSQL DB
There’s a better option that you’ve probably never heard of
Introduction
I use a lot of great open source projects, but the vast majority of the time, the reason I don’t adopt an open source project is because of the 3rd party database dependency that they rely on.
It appears that when a NoSQL (document) database is needed, open source developers almost always choose MongoDB. But MongoDB has had a frustrating year or two for open source.
First off, they’re no longer truly open source. In an attempt to ward off abusive cloud providers, mostly AWS, they hastily moved to the SSPL license which is officially not open source: https://opensource.org/node/1099
Second, some companies have gone with an all or nothing approach to the operators needed to run databases on Kubernetes. MongoDB is one of those. They did come out with a community operator, but in the first few months of working with it, I found it to be almost useless.
Also, many open source projects often rely on multiple NoSQL databases to fill other needs, for example, a search database. Elasticsearch is often the default there (also on the SSPL license now). This results in open source projects that are bulky and difficult to manage due to their multiple database dependencies.
But there’s a better way. A much better way.
Kubernetes
Before I talk about this better way, I wanted to quickly discuss the often hot issue of running databases on Kubernetes.
The short answer to whether you should, is there isn’t much benefit to running a database on K8s if it wasn’t built for it. You’re basically adding a layer of complexity without any added benefit.
However, if a database was built with Kubernetes in mind and you are mindful of what else is running on your clusters, it can be pretty awesome to run a database on Kubernetes, since you get to take advantage of the IaC principles that Kubernetes pushes you into.
The key indicator that a database is Kubernetes ready is if it has a quality operator, hopefully built by the people who also contribute to the actual database…
