Microsoft announced the usage of MongoDB Atlas for free on Microsoft Azure. A free tier known as M0 is available on Azure, which grants users 512 MB of storage to allow learning MongoDB, prototyping, and early development.
MongoDB Atlas is a fully managed MongoDB cloud service that is engineered and run by the same team that builds the database. Operational and security practices are built in, and administration tasks are automated, such as infrastructure provisioning, database setup, ensuring availability, global distribution, and backups.
The availability of MongoDB Atlas is a part of Microsoft's broader goal to provide customers with more choice. With Atlas, customers will get the latest version of MongoDB on the M0 free tier. Furthermore, users will have other benefits of a managed Atlas in Azure. According to the blog post by Donald Petersen, senior partner development manager, Microsoft Azure:
MongoDB Atlas cluster types, M0 clusters can grant users optimal security with end-to-end encryption, high availability, and fully managed upgrades. M0 clusters also enable faster development by allowing teams to perform create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations against their data right from their browsers via the built-in Data Explorer.
Lindsay Zwart, general manager, Intelligent Cloud, Microsoft US, said in a Nasdaq article:
Being able to provide a MongoDB Atlas free tier on the Microsoft Azure platform is a huge positive for our joint customers. We know that developers love to use Atlas on Azure as the foundation of their applications, and now there is no barrier to entry for them to test out the combined power of Microsoft Azure and MongoDB Atlas.
With MongoDB Atlas available on Azure, the database can also integrate with other Azure analytic offerings, such as Power BI and Microsoft Azure Databricks.
A typical deployment of Atlas is straightforward. After signing up for MongoDB Atlas, select Azure as a cloud of choice and one of the regions when building the first Atlas cluster. Subsequently, choose "M0"; in the cluster tier dropdown.
Currently, MongoDB Atlas is offered on Azure alongside AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and users can also have a free tier on these cloud platforms with the same amount of storage. The goal of MongoDB Atlas is that users should have no lock into one cloud provider.
The MongoDB Atlas free tier will be available in three Azure regions (East US, East Asia, and West Europe). More details on MongoDB Atlas are available on the website.