Editions

This document helps you select the right edition of MongoDB and determine the optimal CPU, RAM, storage, and Oplog sizes with confidence. It blends MongoDB’s official guidance with field-tested tips from operators.

IONOS Cloud offers Playground, Business, and Enterprise editions for managed MongoDB.

• The Playground edition provides temporary, sandboxed environments intended solely for testing and experimentation. It imposes strict connection limits and is automatically deleted at the end of each month, making it unsuitable for production workloads.

• For production, opt for either Business or Enterprise. For more information on the capabilities of each of these versions, see Overview and Features and Benefits.

Shared features

Both MongoDB Business and Enterprise editions offer the following capabilities:

• Fully managed DBaaS on IONOS Cloud with high availability and automation for provisioning, patching, updates, and monitoring.

• Horizontal scalability options through Replication and Sharding.

• Private-LAN access and backup support.

Key differentiators

Capability	MongoDB Business	MogoDB Enterprise
Provisioning	Available in different sizes listed in the Templates configuration section.	Flex model of RAM, CPU, and storage based on workflow needs. You can build your own configuration within the applicable Resource Allocation and Connection Limits.
Deployment Type	Replica set.	Replica set or sharded cluster.
Sharding	Not available.	Available. You can create and increase the shard counts through the API.
BI Connector	Not available.	Available. It is supported per cluster. For more information, see API.
Scaling Envelope	Designed for production workloads on a single replica set; suitable for applications that do not require high concurrency or large connection volumes.	Supports larger resource allocations and horizontal scaling, making it ideal for workloads with very high throughput requirements or managing large datasets across multiple nodes.

Choose the right edition

• If your workload comfortably fits a 3-node replica set and you do not need BI Connector, choose the Business edition.

• If you expect sharding, BI Connector, or need more room to scale out, choose the Enterprise edition.

Choose Enterprise and Sharding

Consider migrating from a single replica set MongoDB Business deployment to a MongoDB Enterprise edition with sharding when any of the following conditions apply:

• Your working set cannot fit in a reasonable amount of RAM per node, even after right-sizing storage for performance.

• Hot collections or aggregations push a single node’s SSD/IOPS too hard during peaks.

• You need to scale write throughput horizontally with a good shard key.

Enterprise edition topology

Unlike the MongoDB Business edition, which is strictly a single replica set, the MongoDB Enterprise edition offers two distinct topology options to match your scale.

Option 1: Enterprise Replica Set (Vertical Scaling)

• Best-fit: For workloads that apply within the physical resources of a single server.

• Architecture: Single primary instance.

• Write Limit: Dependent on the disk size. It reaches the maximum limit at 30,000 Write IOPS (at 600 GB+ volume size).

• Capacity: Scales up to 230 GB RAM per instance.

Option 2: Enterprise Sharded Cluster (Horizontal Scaling)

• Best-fit: For massive workloads that exceed the vertical caps of a single instance.

• Architecture: Multiple replica sets (Shards).

• Write Throughput: Distributes writes across multiple primary instances (one per shard).

• Total IOPS: The limit becomes 30,000 multiplied by the number of shards.

Decision matrix: When to Shard?

Use this matrix to identify if you have reached a Vertical Limit. If you exceed any of the listed thresholds, you must select a Sharded Cluster.

Resource Limit	Threshold (Single Instance)	Why Shard?
RAM (Working Set)	> 230 GB	Memory Wall: The active dataset exceeds the maximum RAM of the largest available instance.
Connections	> 114,000	Connection Wall: A single 230 GB instance supports ~114k connections. Sharding distributes connections.
Write IOPS	> 30,000 IOPS	IOPS Wall: Performance scales with disk size (50 IOPS × GB) but reaches a Hard Cap at 30,000 IOPS (reached at 600 GB). To exceed 30,000 IOPS, you must shard to aggregate IOPS from multiple volumes.
Throuhgput	> 600 MB/s	Bandwidth Wall: A single volume cannot exceed 600 MB/s sequential throughput.
CPU (Writes)	Primary saturated.	Compute Bottleneck: The single primary instance is 100% utilized.

Warning:

Migration is Manual: It is vital to choose the correct edition upfront. Moving from MongoDB Business to MongoDB Enterprise is not an automatic upgrade; it is a platform migration.

• No Resize Button: You cannot simply resize a MongoDB Business instance to a MongoDB Enterprise instance.

• Manual Effort: To switch later, you must provision a new enterprise cluster and manually migrate your data.