A Short eBook on Scaling MongoDB

I just finished a little ebook for O’Reilly: Scaling MongoDB. I’m excited about it, it was really fun to write and I think it’ll be both fun and instructive to read. It covers:

• What a cluster is
• How it works (at a high level)
• How to set it up correctly
• The differences in programming for a cluster vs. a single server
• How to administer a cluster
• What can go wrong and how to handle it

So, why would you want to get a copy?

• It’s a succinct reference for anything that’s likely to come up and covers the common questions I’ve heard people ask in the last year.
• I heard some grumbling about my post on choosing a shard key (“Ugh, a metaphor,” -an IRC user). People who don’t like metaphors will be pleased to hear that this book has a straight-forward, serious-business section on choosing a shard key that not only lacks a metaphor but also goes much more into depth than the blog post.
• It’s a quick read. There are code examples, of course, and it can be used as a reference, but after banging out 15,000 words in a couple of days, I took the next couple weeks to make them all flow together like fuckin’ Shakespeare.
• It can be updated in real time! After MongoDB: The Definitive Guide becoming out-of-date approximately 6 seconds after we handed in the final draft, I’m delighted that new sections, advice, and features can be added as needed. Once you buy the ebook, you can update to the latest “edition” whenever you want, as many times as you want. O’Reilly wants to do automatic updates, but so far the infrastructure isn’t there in traditional ebook readers so you’ll have to update it manually.

You can also get a “print on demand” copy if you’re old school.

I hope you guys will check it out and let me know what you think!

To promote the book, Meghan is forcing me to do a webcast on Friday (February 4th). It’s called How Sharding Works and it’s a combination whitepaper and Magic School Bus tour of sharding. It should cover some of the interesting stuff about sharding that didn’t really fit into the 60 pages I had to work with (or the more practical focus of the book).