What’s next for developers

You have an application talking to the database. These are the things worth doing before you call it production-ready.

• Enable TLS for application connections — Encrypt traffic between your app and the database.
• Create and manage application users — Use dedicated, least-privilege users instead of the default admin.
• Expose the cluster for production access — Connect from outside the cluster (load balancer or ingress) instead of port-forward.
• Scale the replica set — Add nodes for read capacity and high availability; understand how your driver uses secondaries.
• Understand backups and restore — See backup types, point-in-time recovery, and what they mean for your app.
• Test your disaster recovery and failover strategies — Practice a failover before you need one.

Operating the cluster rather than building against it? See What’s next for operators.

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Last update: September 8, 2026
Created: November 16, 2023