Announcing MongoDB Server 8.0 Platform Support Improvements

Alexandre Ettouati
June 17, 2024

Last month at MongoDB.local NYC 2024, we announced the preview of MDB 8.0, the next evolution of MongoDB’s modern database. With MongoDB 8.0, we’re focused on delivering the unparalleled performance, scalability, and operational resilience necessary to support the creation of next-generation applications.

For that to be possible, users must be able to deploy MongoDB on industry-standard operating systems. As a result, we are updating our Server Platform Policy to ensure that customers have the best possible experience when using MongoDB.

Starting in MongoDB 8.0, there will be two new changes:

  1. When a new major version of MongoDB is released, we will only release it operating system (OS) versions that are fully supported by the vendor for the duration of the MongoDB version’s life. In short, we will support an operating system if the operating system’s Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) date is after the MongoDB Server’s End of Life (EOL) date.

  2. We will release new MongoDB Server versions (both major and minor) on the minimum supported minor version of the OS (defined by the OS vendor). Once an OS minor version is no longer supported by the vendor, we will update future MongoDB Server versions to the next supported OS minor version.

As always, MongoDB reserves the right to discontinue support for platforms based on lack of user demand and/or technical difficulties (e.g., if a platform doesn’t support required libraries or compiler features).

Ensuring best-in-class security

MongoDB routinely updates our documentation to indicate which platforms a new version of the MongoDB Server will be available on with the general availability release of that new server version.

To ensure that MongoDB customers can meet strong regulatory and security requirements, our software is developed, released, and distributed in accordance with industry security best practices. Given the mission-critical nature of MongoDB’s business—providing a highly secure, performant data platform to tens of thousands of customers in over 100 countries—we strive to provide strong and consistent security assurances across all of our products. In addition, MongoDB partners also need guarantees about the security development lifecycle of our products so they can provide the best experience to their customers.

By ensuring that our software runs only on platform versions that are receiving security patches, we aim to limit the vulnerabilities that might be introduced by customers running EOL operating systems.

The significance of this change

With every major server release, MongoDB determines the supported builds for that general availability (GA) release according to the planned vendor platform’s end of life date —meaning the MongoDB major release will not support the operating system if the operating system’s extended lifecycle support ends before the MongoDB EOL date. This also applies to server container images delivered to our customers.

Furthermore, to guarantee security assurances for operating systems that have a minimum minor version, we will only build new versions of MongoDB Server software on a vendor-supported major/minor version of the operating system. Concretely, we will build new versions of MongoDB on a minimum minor version until it hits a maintenance event (defined on a per-vendor basis), and at that point future MongoDB server builds will be updated to the new supported minor version.

Separately, when a vendor publishes a new major version of an operating system after a given version of MongoDB reaches GA, we will evaluate whether the latest MongoDB release will run on this new OS version, or we will wait for the next major MongoDB release before documenting formal platform support on our website.

Walkthrough: How it could work for you

Consider the RHEL 9 Planning Guide below and the hypothetical release cadence of MongoDB version X.0. As long as version X.0 is released three years before the end of RHEL 9 support, which as noted by RHEL is 2032, we will provide support on RHEL 9. This means that 2029 will be the last year that MongoDB releases a server version on RHEL 9.

Next, consider that version X.0 will be released at the end of 2025. Following the Extended Update Support Plan, we will build version X.0 on RHEL 9.6 until the start of 2026 when RHEL 9.8 becomes available. And then for future versions, MDB X.Y will begin being built on RHEL 9.8 until we require the minimum version to be 9.10 in 2027.

Diagram of the RHEL 9 planning guide. The left side of the chart features ratings from 9.0 up to 9.10. The bottom of the chart has the years from 2022 to 2032. The bars within the chart represent dark blue as minor release, light blue as extended update support, and light green as enhanced extended update support. The dark blue, minor release, starts in 2022 at 9.0 and reaches 9.10 in 2027. Light blue, extended update support, starts at the end of 2022 and peaks at 9.8 in 2026. Finally, the light green, enhanced extended update support, starts at 9.0 in 2024 and reaches 9.8 in 2028.
RHEL 9 planning guide

Building the future

Overall, these coming changes to the MongoDB Server Platform Policy underscore MongoDB’s commitment to helping developers innovate quickly and easily while providing an even more highly secure and performant data platform.

Stay tuned for additional updates about MongoDB 8.0—which will provide optimal performance by dramatically increasing query performance, improving resilience during periods of heavy load, making scalability easier and more cost-effective, and making time series collections faster and more efficient.

For more information about the Server Platform Policy updates, please refer to our documentation.

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AI-Powered Media Personalization: MongoDB and Vector Search

In recent years, the media industry has grappled with a range of serious challenges, from adapting to digital platforms and on-demand consumption, to monetizing digital content, and competing with tech giants and new media upstarts. Economic pressures from declining sources of revenue like advertising, trust issues due to misinformation, and the difficulty of navigating regulatory environments have added to the complexities facing the industry. Additionally, keeping pace with technological advancements, ensuring cybersecurity, engaging audiences with personalized and interactive content, and addressing globalization issues all require significant innovation and investment to maintain content quality and relevance. In particular, a surge in digital content has saturated the media market, making it increasingly difficult to capture and retain audience attention. Furthermore, a decline in referral traffic—primarily from social media platforms and search engines—has put significant pressure on traditional media outlets. An industry survey from a sample of more than 300 digital leaders from more than 50 countries and territories shows that traffic to news sites from Facebook fell 48% in 2023, with traffic from X/Twitter declining by 27%. As a result, publishers are seeking ways to stabilize their user bases and to enhance engagement sustainably, with 77% looking to invest more in direct channels to deal with the loss of referrals. Enter artificial intelligence: generative AI-powered personalization has become a critical tool for driving the future of media channels. The approach we discuss here offers a roadmap for publishers navigating the shifting dynamics of news consumption and user engagement. Indeed, using AI for backend news automation ( 56% ) is considered the most important use of the technology by publishers. 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The below image shows a reference architecture highlighting where MongoDB can be leveraged to achieve AI-powered personalization. To achieve this, you can integrate several advanced capabilities: Content suggestions and personalization: The solution can suggest content that aligns with individual preferences and past interactions. This not only enhances user engagement but also increases the likelihood of converting free users into paying subscribers. By integrating MongoDB's vector search to perform k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) searches , you can streamline and optimize how content is matched. Vectors are embedded directly in MongoDB documents, which has several advantages. For instance: No complexities of a polyglot persistence architecture. No need to extract, transform, and load (ETL) data between different database systems, which simplifies the data architecture and reduces overhead. MongoDB’s built-in scalability and resilience can support vector search operations more reliably. 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In traditional publishing workflows, selecting these keywords can be a highly manual and labor-intensive task, requiring content creators to identify and incorporate relevant keywords meticulously. This process is not only time-consuming but also prone to human error, with significant keywords often overlooked or underutilized, which can diminish the content's visibility and engagement. With the help of the underlying LLM, the solution extracts keywords automatically and with high sophistication. Automatic creation of Insights and dossiers: The solution can automatically generate comprehensive insights and dossiers from multiple articles. This feature is particularly valuable for users interested in deep dives into specific topics or events, providing them with a rich, contextual experience. This capability leverages the power of one or more Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate natural language output, enhancing the richness and accessibility of information derived from across multiple source articles. This process is agnostic to the specific LLMs used, providing flexibility and adaptability to integrate with any leading language model that fits the publisher's requirements. Whether the publisher chooses to employ more widely recognized models (like OpenAI's GPT series) or other emerging technologies, our solution seamlessly incorporates these tools to synthesize and summarize vast amounts of data. Here’s a deeper look at how this works: Integration with multiple sources: The system pulls content from a variety of articles and data sources, retrieved with MongoDB Atlas Vector Search. Found items are then compiled into dossiers, which provide users with a detailed and contextual exploration of topics, curated to offer a narrative or analytical perspective that adds value beyond the original content. Customizable output: The output is highly customizable. Publishers can set parameters based on their audience’s preferences or specific project requirements. This includes adjusting the level of detail, the use of technical versus layman terms, and the inclusion of multimedia elements to complement the text. This feature significantly enhances user engagement by delivering highly personalized and context-rich content. It caters to users looking for quick summaries as well as those seeking in-depth analyses, thereby broadening the appeal of the platform and encouraging deeper interaction with the content. By using LLMs to automate these processes, publishers can maintain a high level of productivity and innovation in content creation, ensuring they remain at the cutting edge of media delivery. Future directions As media consumption habits continue to evolve, AI-powered personalization stands out as a vital tool for publishers. By using AI to deliver tailored content and to automate back end processes, publishers can address the decline in traditional referrals and build stronger, more direct relationships with their audiences. If you would like to learn more about AI-Powered Media Personalization, visit the following resources: AI-Powered Personalization to Drive Next-Generation Media Channels AI-Powered Innovation in Telecommunications and Media GitHub Repository : Create a local version of this solution by following the instructions in the repository Head over to our quick-start guide to get started with Atlas Vector Search today.

June 13, 2024
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MongoDB Atlas Integration with Ably Unlocks Real-time Capabilities

Enterprises across sectors increasingly realize that data, like time, doesn’t wait. Indeed, harnessing and synchronizing information in real time is the new currency of business agility. Enter the alliance between MongoDB and Ably—a partnership that has led to Ably's new database connector for MongoDB Atlas . The new database connector provides a robust framework for businesses to create real-time, data-intensive applications that can provide top-notch user experiences thanks to an opinionated client SDK to be used on top of LiveSync, ensuring both data integrity and real-time consistency—without compromising your existing tech stack. The synergy of MongoDB Atlas and Ably LiveSync This new MongoDB Atlas-Ably integration tackles a fundamental challenge in modern application architecture: maintaining data consistency across distributed systems in real-time. MongoDB Atlas serves as the foundation—a flexible, scalable database service that adapts to the ebb and flow of data demands. Meanwhile, Ably LiveSync acts as the nervous system, ensuring that every change, every update, resonates instantly across the entire application ecosystem. The Ably LiveSync database connector for MongoDB Atlas offers a transformative approach to real-time data management, combining unparalleled scalability with seamless synchronization. This solution effortlessly adapts to growing data volumes and expanding user bases, catering to businesses of all sizes—from agile startups to established enterprises. By rapidly conveying database changes to end-users, it ensures that all stakeholders operate from a single, up-to-date source of truth, fostering data consistency across the entire organization. At its core, LiveSync is built with robust resilience in mind, featuring built-in failover mechanisms and connection recovery capabilities. This architecture provides businesses with the high availability they need to maintain continuous operations in today's always-on digital landscape. Moreover, by abstracting away the complexities of real-time infrastructure, LiveSync empowers developers to focus on creating features that drive business value. This focus on developer productivity, combined with its scalability and reliability, positions Ably LiveSync for MongoDB Atlas as a cornerstone technology for companies aiming to harness the power of real-time data synchronization. Figure 1: Ably real-time integration with MongoDB Atlas. Industry transformation: A real-time revolution This new integration has a number of implications across various sectors. For example, in the banking and financial services sector , the MongoDB Atlas-Ably integration enables instantaneous fraud detection systems that can promptly react to potential threats. Live trading platforms benefit as well, seamlessly updating to reflect every market change as it happens. 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Instant claim processing and status updates enhance customer satisfaction, while live tracking of insured assets facilitates more accurate underwriting and expedites the resolution of claims. Finally, in telecommunications and media this integration promises buffer-free content delivery and streaming services, vastly improving the end-user experience. real-time network performance monitoring enables proactive issue resolution, maintaining service quality. Users can enjoy synchronized experiences across multiple devices and platforms, fostering seamless interaction with digital content. Today's business imperative As industries continue to evolve at a rapid pace, the integration of MongoDB Atlas and Ably LiveSync provides a compelling way for businesses to not only keep up but lead the real-time revolution. 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