Infoworks 6.1.3
Getting Started

MongoDB Atlas

Infoworks uses locally managed MongoDB to store the metadata by default. Infoworks can be configured to use hosted MongoDB Atlas service to use the following features of the cloud-hosted service:

  • Durability
  • Security
  • Elasticity

Infoworks supports enabling MongoDB Atlas either during a fresh installation, upgrade from lower versions, or by manual configuration.

To enable the use of Atlas with Infoworks, we must set up the following:

  • Atlas account
  • Database
  • Database users

Atlas Setup

Prerequisite

  • Connection between MongoDB Atlas and Kubernetes cluster should be successfully established.

Account Creation

To perform any actions in Atlas we first need to set up an account, organization, and project. Refer to Atlas Account Creation for more information.

Cluster Setup

To create an Atlas MongoDB database cluster suitable for use in Infoworks, refer to Database Cluster Creation.

  • Supported MongoDB version: 5.0.8
  • There should be a dedicated cluster.
  • Supported Cluster type: M20 or higher tier.
  • MongoDB Atlas should be on the same cloud provider and region as Infoworks and data plane.
  • Use private endpoint or network peering
  • Backup configuration depending on use case

For Atlas supported Cloud providers and regions, see Cloud Providers and Regions

For setting up private endpoints or network peering and network and security topics, see Configure Security Features for Database Deployments

MongoDB Atlas Setup Backup and Restore

Infoworks recommends enabling backup solution on MongoDB Atlas for better recovery in case of any failures. For more information refer to MongoDB Backup and Restore.

Database and User Setup

Creating Custom Roles

To create custom roles required by Infoworks DB, perform the following procedure.

Step 1: Go to navigation pane on the left-side, under the Security section, click Database Access, and then click Add New Custom Role.

Step 2: Once the Add New Custom Role dialog opens, provide the following:

  1. Under the Custom Role Name, type infoworksCustomRole.
  2. Under the Action or Role section, select enableprofiler from the dropdown, and add infoworks-new from the database.
  3. Under the Action or Role section, select enableprofiler from the dropdown, and add quartzio from the database.
  4. Click Add Custom Role.

While creating Custom Roles, you should assign the privileges correctly.

MongoDB Atlas as a PaaS MetaDB for Infoworks can be setup in the following ways:

Without Drop (set MONGO_FORCE_DROP=false) - Infoworks will try to read database details.

  • If the database is empty, the seed data will be restored.
  • If the database has the collections, it will validate that there must be at least the required number of collections, and continue without restoring.
  • Special Privilege Required - dbStats on the database.

With Drop (set MONGO_FORCE_DROP=true) - Infoworks will proceed to restore the seed data with the drop flag, dropping any conflicting collections.

Required Privileges:

PrivilegeRestore Without DropRestore With Drop
dbStatsYesNo
listCollectionsYesYes
createCollectionYesYes
dropCollectionNoYes
listIndexesYesYes
createIndexYesYes
dropIndexYesYes
convertToCappedYesYes
insertYesYes
findYesYes
removeYesYes
updateYesYes

The MongoDB User (set in MONGODB_USERNAME) must have a role with above privileges assigned on the given database (set in INFOWORKS_MONGODB_DATABASE_NAME).

Step 3: Note down the Infoworks MetaDB Database name and Infoworks Quartzio Database for Installation and Upgrade Steps.

Step 4: Note down the Custom Role Name for next steps.

For more information related to creating custom roles, refer to Configure Custom Database Roles

Setup Infoworks Database User

Infoworks supports the default SCRAM authentication method on MongoDB Atlas. To create Infoworks MetaDB users, follow these steps.

Step 1: From the Database Access tab, under the Database Users tab, add a new database user.

Step 2: Create an Infoworks DB username with a password on MongoDB Atlas and attach the previously created custom role to this user.

Step 3: Note these credentials for next steps.

For more information related to creating users on MongoDB Atlas, refer to Configure Database Users.

Note Infoworks DBs are handled as a part of the installation and upgrade process.

Verifying Connection from MongoDB to Infoworks

Verify that applications can access the Atlas cluster from Infoworks AKS cluster. For Infoworks-specific user, refer to previously mentioned Database and User Setup.

Use the following procedure as a reference only.

Step 1: Log in to your Bastion host where Kubernetes cluster is accessible.

Step 2: Create a pod with MongoDB image in the respective namespace.

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Step 3: Run the exec command to run bash command inside the pod.

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Step 4: Get the connection string from MongoDB Atlas Connect. For example, consider the below given command.

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Step 5: Provide the password.

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The MongoDB and Infoworks are successfully connected. In case of any errors, refer to official Mongo Documentation.

Step 6: Once the connection between MongoDB and Infoworks is successful. If you wish to delete MongoDB pod, execute the following command.

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MongoDB Atlas Backup and Restore

MongoDB Backup is a necessary step to support rollback, since upgrading Infoworks performs transformations on the mongo data, which makes it incompatible for the previous versions.

Backup

First Method: Using Mongo Atlas

Mongo Atlas provides a functionality to take snapshot of the databases created and stores them on a cloud platform, thus saving the space on your local system. To take one-time snapshot of the database, refer to MongoDb Atlas One-Time-On-Demand-Snapshot.

However, this method has some limitations.

Limitations

  • Snapshot takes a backup of the entire project and not only of a specific database inside the project.
  • Restoration of snapshots is supported only within the same major version. For example, if a snapshot is taken for a db with Mongo Atlas 4.x, it cannot be restored in Mongo Atlas 5.x.

Second Method: Using Mongodump commands for Backup

To avoid the limitations encountered in the first method, you may take a backup of Mongo data through the mongotools binaries.

Limitation The plaintext MongoDB Password has to be provided as an environment variable mounted to the ephemeral pod.

To take a backup using Mongodump commands on a Kubernetes environment:

Step 1: It is assumed that the environment variable IW_HOME is set to /opt/infoworks, which is the path where your current 5.4.0 charts are stored. In case it is not set, execute the following command:

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Step 2: Export the following environment variables.

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For more details regarding the above mentioned commands, refer to the Infoworks Installation on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

NOTE The Password provided as MONGO_PLAINTEXT_PASSWORD is plain text, and not encrypted.

NOTE All of the above values can be found in $IW_HOME/iw-k8s-installer/configure.sh file.

Step 3: Create a directory to store the database backup dump using the below command.

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Step 4: Clear any existing pods with the same name.

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Step 5: Run the commands to create the required pod on the same namespace as the Kubernetes installation.

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Step 6: Once the mongo-backup is up, run the following command to get logs

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After some time, you will receive the following message on your command prompt.

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Step 7: Copy the generated artifacts to your machine.

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This should create the following files in the directory mongo_backup, $(date -I) being the current timestamp. To view the list of directories, execute the following command:

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Keep these files safe for restoring later.

Restore

When we have to rollback the Infoworks environment from a higher version to a lower version, it is important to restore the MongoDB database pertaining to the rollback version.

First Method: Using Mongo Atlas

Mongo Atlas provides a functionality to restore the snapshot of the databases created. To restore the one-time-on demand snapshot of the database, refer to MongoDb Atlas One-Time-On-Demand-Snapshot Restore.

However, this method has a limitation.

Limitation

  • Restoration of snapshots is supported only within the same major version. For example, if a snapshot is taken for a db with Mongo Atlas 4.x, it cannot be restored in Mongo Atlas 5.x.

Second Method: Using mongorestore commands for Restore

To avoid the limitations encountered in the first method, you may take a backup of Mongo data through the mongotools binaries.

Limitation

The plaintext MongoDB Password has to be provided as an environment variable mounted to the ephemeral pod.

Step 1: It is assumed that the environment variable IW_HOME is set to /opt/infoworks, which is the path where your current 5.4.0 charts are stored. In case it is not set, execute the following command:

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Step 2: Export the following environment variables.

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For more details regarding the above mentioned commands, refer to the Infoworks Installation on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

NOTE The Password provided as MONGO_PLAINTEXT_PASSWORD is plain text, and not encrypted.

NOTE All of the above values can be found in $IW_HOME/iw-k8s-installer/configure.sh file.

It is recommended to take a backup of the current MongoDB by exporting the following variable. This requires the given user to have permissions to create a new Database. The pod will fail in case the backup fails, therefore do not export it to skip the backup.

This will attempt to DROP the given $INFOWORKS_MONGODB_BACKUP_DATABASE_NAME and $QUARTZIO_MONGODB_BACKUP_DATABASE_NAME databases to create a new one.

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Step 3: Switch to the directory where mongodb backups were stored.

NOTE Assuming the backups were stored in ${IW_HOME}/mongodb_backup as per the Backup section.

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Step 4: Clear any existing pods with the same name.

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Step 5: Run the commands to create the required pod on the same namespace as the Kubernetes installation.

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Step 6: Once the pod is running, run the following command to copy the backup to the pod.

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After copying the above file, the restore script will automatically restore from the backup files supplied.

Upgrading Mongo Database Deployment from 5.0.x to 7.0.x on Atlas

Caveat before starting the database upgrade : Please note that once the MongoDB database is upgraded to a major version, it will not be possible to roll back to a lower major version.

Before beginning the upgrade, make sure to take backup of the infoworks and quartzio databases to avoid data loss.

NOTE Refer to this documentation for the detailed step for taking Backup of MongoDB Databases.

In order to update mongodb from 5.0.x to 7.0.x version, first we will have to upgrade to 6.0.x and then from 6.0.x to 7.0.x because mongodb atlas supports upgrading only to the immediate higher version which means from 5.0.x, you can upgrade only to 6.0.x. You directly cannot upgrade to 7.0.x from 5.0.x.

Follow the below steps to upgrade the mongodb version:

Step 1: Open the database deployment on MongoDb Atlas, and click on Edit Config Tab and select the database you want to upgrade.

Step 2: After clicking on Edit Config, you will see a section saying Additional Settings. Expand this section. There will be a property by the name Select Version which will have dropdown option. In that dropdown, you will see a list of mongodb versions. Select MongoDB 6.0.

NOTE Apart from MongoDB 6.0, all other versions will not be available for selection. This is because at one time, only the immediate next major version upgrade is allowed.

Step 3: Post selecting the MongoDB 6.0, version, click on Review Changes at the bottom of the page. Next, you will see the below window. Click on Apply Changes to start the upgrade process.

Step 4: When the upgrade is completed, the database deployment will look like this and the upgraded version will be displayed at the left corner as highlighted in the snippet.

Step 5: Now to upgrade MongoDB from 6.0.x to 7.0.x, repeat all the above steps and the mongodb will be updated to 7.0.x. Post the upgrade is completed , validate the version in the left bottom corner.

  Last updated by Monika Momaya