Squeezing out MongoDB’s available storage

Exploring Three Viable Approaches to Optimize Database Resources

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

There are always times when the available space in the database is exhausted, and we need to take action.

Generally, the most common approach is vertical scaling, also known as scale-up, which involves increasing the specifications of the machine directly to expand the available space. Another alternative solution is horizontal scaling, also known as scale-out or sharding, which enhances overall available space by distributing data across different machines.

However, both scale-up and scale-out involve costs, and these can be substantial. For organizations with budget constraints, neither of these approaches may be immediately feasible. So, what can be done?

In such cases, the only option is to squeeze out as much space as possible from the existing machines, no matter what it takes, just pure squeezing.

In this article, we take MongoDB as an example to explore the viable approaches for squeezing out available space.

Remove useless index

Indexes are a trade-off of space for time to improve query performance. Therefore, if unused indexes can be identified and removed, the initially consumed space can be…