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MongoDB vs. Aerospike

naresh-maharaj
Naresh Maharaj
Principal Field Consulting Engineer
February 15, 2023|3 min read

Over the past few months, people have asked me several questions about MongoDB. But why me — I hear you asking. Well, I spent 3 years as a Senior Field Consultant at MongoDB, and gosh, I have had a fair few questions thrown at me, mainly by customers. Below are some of the most recent questions I have been asked, and wanted to share my thoughts on MongoDB capabilities vs. Aerospike.If you have any more questions you would like featured in this post, please do not hesitate to email me at nmaharaj@aerospike.com.

Let’s have it then…

Challenge #1: MongoDB is hard to scale from a single replica set to a fully sharded environment

Partly true – it does require many components and configuration, and you need to know precisely what the long-term impact is of getting it wrong — expert advice is often required. Aerospike is already sharded by default so there is no need for conversions/future headaches with sharding. Learn more about data distribution with Aerospike.

Challenge #2: MongoDB’s performance rapidly degrades with increasing users

This is more likely with a single node or smaller undersized cluster. MongoDB is not designed for single-node use and is, therefore, irrelevant.

Challenge #3: MongoDB is significantly susceptible to data loss and inconsistency

Simply untrue — with RF:3 across 3+ nodes in 3 separate racks means 0.99999 uptime — UNTRUE. The data is eventually consistent. Aerospike, however, offers strong consistency which makes it far superior.

Challenge #4: MongoDB requires a third-party cache to help it perform

Untrue — MDB bought WiredTiger and now uses this as the default caching mechanism. WT was a world leader in high-performance caching software. However, MDB provides the API to allow third parties to write their own caching software, but to date, I am unaware of anyone who would try it.

Challenge #5: When deployed in multiple geographies, MongoDB can’t perform all writes locally vs. AerospikeTrue — MongoDB does not have a smart solution for writes locally across regions.

Aerospike does this well as XDR (cross-datacenter replication ) solves this issue, especially with edge computing use cases coming into play more than ever.

Challenge #6: MongoDB lacks a mobile solution

UNTRUE — Could not be further from the truth.

MDB purchased Open Source Mobile Realm for $39M, which has 100,000+ developers.

Challenge #7: MongoDB is time-consuming to manage and maintain

Untrue. MDB has sophisticated at-scale frontend/API access to DBaaS for on-prem, public cloud, customer cloud managed, etc.

When comparing MongoDB vs. Aerospike, on the other hand, Aerospike can completely manage your entire Aerospike Cloud infrastructure allowing you to focus on what matters and leaving the devops to the Aerospike Cloud Management Service. It’s great value for money, too, if you’re a small start-up or a large corporate enterprise.

Aerospike Cloud Managed Service ensures always-on, secure operation of Aerospike Database 6 and Real-time Data Platform in your AWS or GCP cloud.

This blog was originally posted on medium.com.

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