MongoDB DBA Associate study guide
MongoDB DBA Associate · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The MongoDB DBA Associate credential is an entry-to-mid-level certification aimed at administrators who already operate MongoDB in development or small production environments and want independent verification of their operational skills. It suits system administrators, DevOps engineers, and backend developers who have moved from writing queries to running clusters: installing and configuring mongod, planning replica sets, reasoning about shard keys, managing users and TLS, taking and testing backups, and reading server diagnostics. The MongoDB DBA Associate study guide has 9 sections and about 2,652 words.
01Deployment, Installation, and Topology Planning
The Deployment, Installation, and Topology Planning domain tests whether you can select a production topology, prepare hosts, install MongoDB correctly, and configure mongod and mongos for reliability. Questions often ask you to choose between a replica set and a sharded cluster, identify required configuration file settings, and recognize OS-level tuning that affects stability.
368 words, about 2 min02Replica Set Configuration, Elections, and Failover
Replica Set Configuration, Elections, and Failover tests your ability to initiate and reconfigure sets, reason about election outcomes, and choose write and read semantics that survive failover. MongoDB uses a Raft-like election protocol.
321 words, about 2 min03Sharding: Architecture, Shard Keys, and the Balancer
Sharding: Architecture, Shard Keys, and the Balancer tests your ability to design a sharded cluster, choose a shard key for query and write patterns, and operate chunk migration. A sharded cluster has mongos routers, a config server replica set, and shard replica sets.
326 words, about 2 min04Storage Engine, WiredTiger, and Data Modeling Considerations
Storage Engine, WiredTiger, and Data Modeling tests your knowledge of WiredTiger internals and how document shape affects performance. WiredTiger is the default storage engine.
285 words, about 1 min05Security: Authentication, Authorization, TLS, and Encryption
Security: Authentication, Authorization, TLS, and Encryption tests your ability to enable authentication, apply least-privilege roles, secure cluster traffic, and protect data at rest. Enable authorization with security.authorization: enabled in mongod.conf.
281 words, about 1 min06Backup, Restore, and Disaster Recovery
Backup, Restore, and Disaster Recovery tests whether you can meet RPO and RTO targets with logical, physical, and continuous backups, and restore correctly. mongodump is logical: portable, slower, and not point-in-time consistent across a sharded cluster unless coordinated.
266 words, about 1 min07Monitoring, Diagnostics, and Performance Tuning
Monitoring, Diagnostics, and Performance Tuning tests your ability to read MongoDB metrics, find slow operations, and improve query plans. mongostat shows operations per second, connections, network, and queue lengths such as qr, qw, ar, and aw.
276 words, about 1 min08Upgrades, Maintenance, and Operational Runbooks
Upgrades, Maintenance, and Operational Runbooks tests ordered procedures: rolling upgrades, feature compatibility versions, index builds, and routine maintenance. Upgrade binaries before raising the feature compatibility version (FCV).
260 words, about 1 min09Tools and Automation: mongodump, mongorestore, mongosh, Ops Manager/Cloud Manager
Tools and Automation: mongodump, mongorestore, mongosh, and Ops Manager or Cloud Manager tests command-line tooling and automation platforms. mongosh is the modern shell with a Node.js REPL.
269 words, about 1 min