read-only nodes (Secondaries) •Automatic failover when the Primary goes offline •App-level definition of “write replication” (the w argument to getLastError) •Secondary nodes can replicate with a slaveDelay
documents, called chunks. •As chunks grow in size, the cluster automatically splits them into smaller chunks. •If one shard has too many chunks gets, the cluster automatically migrates chunks. •This is all invisible to applications (unless they peek).
any shard is too great. •It’s possible to migrate a chunk manually, with the moveChunk command. •Migrations can be expensive, and so you can disable them, e.g., during peak load times on your database: // connect to mongos > use config > db.settings.update( { _id: "balancer" }, { $set : { stopped: true } } , true );