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AssessmentGovernment / Defense

An honest read on whether the deployment survives the next order of magnitude

Public Sector Agency

Structured review of schema design, index efficiency, replica set topology, and backup recoverability ahead of a major workload increase.

Overview

A public sector agency was preparing to consolidate several departmental systems onto an existing MongoDB deployment and wanted an independent assessment before committing. AceMQ reviewed the deployment against the projected workload rather than its current one.

Challenge

The cluster had been stable for years at its current scale, which made it hard to tell which of its design choices were sound and which were simply untested. Index coverage, schema shape, replica set member configuration, and backup restore times all needed to be evaluated against a workload several times larger than anything the platform had handled.

Environment

On-premises MongoDB replica sets supporting citizen-facing services with defined data residency requirements.

Approach

AceMQ combined static configuration review with measured evidence: index usage statistics to find indexes nothing queried, explain plans on the top query shapes, and a timed restore from the existing backups to establish real recovery objectives. Findings were ranked by risk against the target workload, with effort estimates attached.

Solution

  1. Index usage analysis identifying unused indexes carrying write and cache cost, plus missing indexes forcing collection scans
  2. Explain plan review across the top query shapes with concrete rewrite or index recommendations
  3. Replica set topology review covering member priorities, voting configuration, write concern, and read preference correctness
  4. Timed restore test from existing backups to establish actual RTO rather than assumed RTO
  5. Schema review targeting unbounded arrays, oversized documents, and patterns that degrade at higher volume
  6. Prioritized remediation roadmap with risk ratings and effort estimates for each finding

Outcome

The agency received a defensible picture of where the deployment would break under the consolidated workload, with the highest-risk items sequenced ahead of the migration. Several assumed-safe configuration choices, including write concern and backup recoverability, turned out to need correction first.

Technologies

MongoDBLinuxPrometheusKubernetes
  • Consulting

    MongoDB Sharding Strategy and Shard Key Redesign

    Logistics and Freight Technology ProviderCross-Industry

    Redesigning a monotonically increasing shard key that concentrated all inserts on one shard and produced jumbo chunks that would not split.

    MongoDBKubernetesKafkaTerraform
    Read case study: MongoDB Sharding Strategy and Shard Key Redesign
  • Remediation

    MongoDB WiredTiger Cache Eviction Remediation

    Global Payments ProcessorFinancial Services

    Diagnosing and resolving application stalls caused by a working set that outgrew the WiredTiger cache, pushing the server into continuous eviction pressure.

    MongoDBKubernetesPrometheusLinux
    Read case study: MongoDB WiredTiger Cache Eviction Remediation
  • Assessment

    Cassandra Cluster Health and Capacity Assessment

    Public Sector AgencyGovernment

    Assessment covering topology, replication and consistency configuration, JVM and garbage collection behavior, compaction health, and growth headroom.

    Apache CassandraLinuxPrometheusKubernetes
    Read case study: Cassandra Cluster Health and Capacity Assessment

Related Reading

Ready for a MongoDB Health Check?

AceMQ's senior MongoDB engineers have handled this exact type of engagement before. Whether you need architectural guidance, hands-on remediation, or an ongoing managed partnership, we're ready to help.