MongoDB

Overview

MongoDB is a document-oriented NoSQL database designed for flexible, schema-free data storage at scale. This template deploys a single-replica MongoDB instance with persistent storage and optional external access via a direct load balancer. Database credentials are not template values. MongoDB reads its username, password and database name from a dictionary secret you create before installing, so no password passes through Helm or lands in the release.

Template version 1.4.0 is a breaking security change. config.username and config.password were removed, and an install or upgrade that still sets either one now fails at render instead of silently falling back to a published default password. If you are running 1.3.2 or earlier, read Upgrading From 1.3.2 or Earlier before you touch the release.

MongoDB on Control Plane operates as a single-replica deployment. Do not scale up the replica count, as this would result in multiple isolated instances rather than a replicated cluster.

What Gets Created

Stateful MongoDB Workload — A single-replica MongoDB container with configurable resources.
Volume Set — Persistent storage for MongoDB data, with optional autoscaling.
Backup Config Secret (optional) — A dictionary secret holding the backup bucket and region. Non-sensitive, and created only when backup.enabled: true.
Identity & Policy — An identity bound to the workload, and a policy granting it reveal on exactly the credentials secret you created — plus the backup config secret and Cloud Account binding when backup is enabled.
Backup Cron Workload (optional) — A scheduled mongodump backup job that writes compressed archives to AWS S3 or GCS.

The template creates no credential secret of its own. The username, password and database name live only in the prerequisite secret described below.

This template does not create a GVC. You must deploy it into an existing GVC.

Upgrading From 1.3.2 or Earlier

Template versions up to 1.3.2 took the database credentials as plain Helm values, shipped working defaults for them, and wrote those credentials into a chart-owned secret named after the release. Version 1.4.0 removes all of that.

	1.3.2 and earlier	1.4.0
Database credentials	`config.username`, `config.password`, `config.database` values	`config.credentialsSecretName` → a dictionary secret you create
Where the password lives	Chart-created secret `RELEASE_NAME-mongo-config`, and the Helm release	Only the secret you create

Carrying the old values forward stops the upgrade. The removed keys are rejected at render, so cpln helm upgrade fails and your existing release is left untouched and running, rather than quietly restarting against a different password:

Error: execution error at (mongodb/templates/identity.yaml:1:4): mongodb: config.username and
config.password were REMOVED — they are now a `dictionary` secret you create, named by
config.credentialsSecretName, holding the keys `username`, `password` and `database`. Delete
them from your values. See Prerequisites in the README.

Read the credentials the database already uses

Credentials are written into the data directory the first time the volume is initialized, so an existing database keeps whatever it was created with. Recover them from your current values file, or from the secret the old version created — do this before upgrading:

cpln secret reveal RELEASE_NAME-mongo-config -o yaml

Pass -o yaml. A bare cpln secret reveal prints only a summary table, not the values.

Create the prerequisite secret with those same values

Follow Prerequisites, using the existing username, password and database name. Different values here do not change the database — they just leave the workload unable to authenticate.

Remove the old keys from your values

Delete config.username, config.password and config.database, and set config.credentialsSecretName to your secret’s name.

Upgrade, then rotate the password

After the upgrade succeeds, change any password that came from a 1.3.2 default — those defaults were published in the public template repository, so treat them as compromised. Rotate inside MongoDB, then update the secret to match:

db.changeUserPassword("myuser", "NEW-STRONG-PASSWORD")

RELEASE_NAME-mongo-config no longer holds credentials. It is now created only when backup.enabled: true, and holds nothing but the bucket and region. Anything outside this release that read the username or password from it by name — another workload’s environment, a policy, or a parent chart bundling MongoDB as a subchart — must be pointed at the secret you create instead. A reference to a key that no longer exists does not fail loudly; it wedges the referring workload silently.

Prerequisites

One secret must exist before you install. It holds the credentials your applications put in their connection strings. The values never pass through Helm, so they do not land in the release. Secrets are org-level, so no GVC flag is involved.

Create the database credentials secret

A dictionary secret holding exactly three keys — username, password and database. MongoDB creates that user and that database on first boot:

cpln secret create-dictionary --name my-mongodb-credentials \
  --entry username=myuser \
  --entry password='YOUR-STRONG-PASSWORD' \
  --entry database=mydb

Set config.credentialsSecretName to the name you used. Secret names are org-wide, so give each release its own.

Read the secret back later

Pass -o yaml. A bare cpln secret reveal prints only a summary table, not the values:

cpln secret reveal my-mongodb-credentials -o yaml

Create the secret before installing, or the deployment wedges silently. The template refuses to render when config.credentialsSecretName is blank, but a name pointing at a secret that does not exist installs “successfully” and then never starts. The container never runs, so cpln logs returns zero lines — there is nothing to log, and every summary surface just looks like a slow deploy. The one place the reason appears is status.versions[].message:

cpln workload get-deployments RELEASE_NAME-mongo --gvc GVC_NAME -o yaml

The secret my-mongodb-credentials no longer exists. Workload updates are paused until the
secret is added or the reference to the secret removed.

Use get-deployments — plain cpln workload get has no versions key and will show you nothing. Creating the missing secret repairs it on its own with no further action, in roughly 5.5 to 10.5 minutes measured across five templates, or run cpln workload force-redeployment RELEASE_NAME-mongo --gvc GVC_NAME to clear it in about 90 seconds.

Backups need a bucket, and a Control Plane Cloud Account, before they can be enabled — see AWS S3 or GCS. Nothing else is required.

Installation

Create the prerequisite secret first, then install by whichever method you prefer:

UI

Browse, install, and manage templates visually

CLI

Manage templates from your terminal

Terraform

Declare templates in your Terraform configurations

Pulumi

Declare templates in your Pulumi programs

Configuration

The default values.yaml for this template:

image: mongo:8.2.3

resources:
  minCpu: 200m
  minMemory: 256Mi
  maxCpu: 500m
  maxMemory: 512Mi

config:
  # REQUIRED PREREQUISITE SECRET — CREATE IT BEFORE YOU INSTALL.
  # A `dictionary` secret holding exactly three keys: `username`, `password`
  # and `database`. If it does not exist at install time the deployment
  # WEDGES silently — `cpln logs` returns nothing at all. See Prerequisites
  # for the exact `cpln secret create-dictionary` command.
  credentialsSecretName: my-mongodb-credentials

volumeset:
  capacity: 10 # initial capacity in GiB (minimum is 10)
  autoscaling:
    enabled: false # Set to true to enable autoscaling
    maxCapacity: 100 # Maximum capacity in GiB when autoscaling is enabled
    minFreePercentage: 10 # Minimum free percentage to trigger scaling when autoscaling is enabled
    scalingFactor: 1.2 # Scaling factor to determine how much to scale up when autoscaling is triggered

internalAccess: # Sets the internal firewall scope
  type: same-gvc # options: none, same-gvc, same-org, workload-list
  workloads:  # Note: can only be used if type is same-gvc or workload-list
    #- //gvc/GVC_NAME/workload/WORKLOAD_NAME

directLoadBalancer:
  enabled: false

backup:
  enabled: false
  image: ghcr.io/controlplane-com/backup-images/mongo-backup:8.0
  schedule: "0 2 * * *"   # daily at 2am UTC

  resources:
    cpu: 100m
    memory: 128Mi

  provider: aws # Options: aws or gcp

  aws:
    bucket: my-backup-bucket
    region: us-east-1
    cloudAccountName: my-backup-cloudaccount
    policyName: my-backup-policy
    prefix: mongodb/backups

  gcp:
    bucket: my-backup-bucket
    cloudAccountName: my-backup-cloudaccount
    prefix: mongodb/backups

Credentials

config.credentialsSecretName — Name of the dictionary secret holding username, password and database. MongoDB creates that root user and that initial database on first boot, and these are the credentials your applications put in their connection strings.

The secret must exist before installing — see Prerequisites. The workload reads it through cpln://secret/... references, so the values appear in neither the Helm release nor the stored workload spec.

The credentials are applied only on first startup, when the data directory is empty. Changing the secret afterwards does not change the running database — it only changes what the workload presents when it authenticates, which will then fail. To rotate on an existing instance, change it inside MongoDB with db.changeUserPassword() first, then update the secret to match.

Resources

resources.minCpu / resources.minMemory — Minimum CPU and memory guaranteed to the workload.
resources.maxCpu / resources.maxMemory — Maximum CPU and memory the workload can use.

Storage

volumeset.capacity — Initial volume size in GiB (minimum 10).
volumeset.autoscaling.enabled — Automatically expand the volume as it fills. When enabled:
- maxCapacity — Maximum volume size in GiB.
- minFreePercentage — Trigger a scale-up when free space drops below this percentage.
- scalingFactor — Multiply the current capacity by this factor when scaling up.

Internal Access

internalAccess.type — Controls which workloads can connect to MongoDB on port 27017:

Type	Description
`none`	No internal access allowed
`same-gvc`	Allow access from all workloads in the same GVC
`same-org`	Allow access from all workloads in the same organization
`workload-list`	Allow access only from specific workloads listed in `workloads`

Direct Load Balancer

directLoadBalancer.enabled — When true, exposes MongoDB externally on port 27017 via a dedicated load balancer IP.

Connecting to MongoDB

Once deployed, connect to MongoDB from within the same GVC using:

RELEASE_NAME-mongo.GVC_NAME.cpln.local:27017

Backup

Backup is disabled by default. When enabled, a cron workload runs mongodump on the configured schedule and uploads compressed archives to AWS S3 or GCS. The backup image is compatible with all MongoDB versions.

backup.enabled — Enable scheduled backups.
backup.schedule — Cron expression for backup frequency (default: daily at 2am UTC).
backup.provider — aws or gcp.
backup.resources.cpu / backup.resources.memory — Resources for the backup cron container.

AWS S3

Before enabling backup with provider: aws, complete the following in your AWS account:

Create an S3 bucket. Set backup.aws.bucket to its name and backup.aws.region to its region.
If you do not have a Cloud Account set up, refer to the docs to Create a Cloud Account. Set backup.aws.cloudAccountName to its name.
Create an IAM policy with the following JSON, replacing YOUR_BUCKET_NAME:

Version 1.4.1 narrows AWS backup permissions. This version removes aws::ReadOnlyAccess from the backup identity. That AWS managed policy granted read access to every bucket in your AWS account and contains no write actions at all, so it was never carrying the backup itself — but it was silently supplying any read action your own bucket-scoped policy happened to omit.Update your IAM policy to the full action list below before upgrading. If it already matches, no action is needed. The identity now carries cpln-connector and your bucket-scoped policy only, which is strictly narrower than before. Nothing else changes.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:DeleteObject",
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObjectVersion",
                "s3:DeleteObjectVersion",
                "s3:GetBucketLocation",
                "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
                "s3:ListBucketMultipartUploads",
                "s3:ListMultipartUploadParts"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR_BUCKET_NAME",
                "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR_BUCKET_NAME/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Set backup.aws.policyName to the name of the policy created in step 3.
Set backup.aws.prefix to the folder path where backups will be stored.

GCS

Before enabling backup with provider: gcp, complete the following in your GCP account:

Create a GCS bucket. Set backup.gcp.bucket to its name.
If you do not have a Cloud Account set up, refer to the docs to Create a Cloud Account. Set backup.gcp.cloudAccountName to its name.
Add the Storage Admin role to the GCP service account associated with the Cloud Account.
Set backup.gcp.prefix to the folder path where backups will be stored.

Restoring a Backup

Run the following from a client with access to the backup bucket. For GCS, replace aws s3 cp s3://... with gsutil cp gs://.... USERNAME is the username entry from your credentials secret.

aws s3 cp s3://BUCKET_NAME/PREFIX/BACKUP_FILE.gz - \
  | gunzip \
  | mongorestore \
      --host=RELEASE_NAME-mongo.GVC_NAME.cpln.local \
      --port=27017 \
      --username=USERNAME \
      --archive

External References

MongoDB Documentation

Official MongoDB documentation

Backup Image Source

Source code for the MongoDB backup container image

MongoDB Template

View the source files, default values, and chart definition

Template Catalog

Templates

Overview

What Gets Created

Upgrading From 1.3.2 or Earlier

Prerequisites

Installation

UI

CLI

Terraform

Pulumi

Configuration

Credentials

Resources

Storage

Internal Access

Direct Load Balancer

Connecting to MongoDB

Backup

AWS S3

GCS

Restoring a Backup

External References

MongoDB Documentation

Backup Image Source

MongoDB Template

​Overview

​What Gets Created

​Upgrading From 1.3.2 or Earlier

​Prerequisites

​Installation

UI

CLI

Terraform

Pulumi

​Configuration

​Credentials

​Resources

​Storage

​Internal Access

​Direct Load Balancer

​Connecting to MongoDB

​Backup

​AWS S3

​GCS

​Restoring a Backup

​External References

MongoDB Documentation

Backup Image Source

MongoDB Template

Overview

What Gets Created

Upgrading From 1.3.2 or Earlier

Prerequisites

Installation

Configuration

Credentials

Resources

Storage

Internal Access

Direct Load Balancer

Connecting to MongoDB

Backup

AWS S3

GCS

Restoring a Backup

External References