What is Mongo DB Atlas?

Mongo DB Atlas is a fully-managed database-as-a-service available on AWS, Azure, and GCP

Before Atlas, I used mLab. mLab was then acquired by MongoDB last year. Pretty much similar to mLab, MongoDB Atlas is the easiest way to have a cloud MongoDB instance.

Why?

• 💲 0 dollars: I am not an advertiser for MongoDB, but I love this service and this one won't break the bank ❌🔨🐖, since... well it's no-strings-attached FREE for up to 512MB. Perfect for small side-projects!
• 🏃‍♂️ Quick, simple, and fast: no installation and config files. After signing up and creating a cluster (takes 5 minutes), you're all set.
• ☁ It's in the cloud: Not running in your machine as a Mongo service. Not in a disk file like diskdb. You can manage it from anywhere through the Atlas web app. For your app, you only need a connection URL to access the db.
• 😎 Very cool UI: Atlas dashboard is very intuitive, and first-time users will find it easy to use with the visual cues and steps.

Cloud setup

There might be some slight screenshot differences to the actual Atlas UI by the time you do this, but the described steps should get you to the same results.

1. First sign up here:

https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/register

2. Create a free tier Starter Cluster

The free Starter Cluster M0 comes with 512 MB Storage, shared RAM and vCPU.

This should be more than enough for our starter Node project.

• Cluster region: you can pick any provider (AWS, Google, Azure) and the region closest to you that has a Free Tier. For me, it was AWS us-east-1.

• You can leave the rest at FREE defaults.