Sync MongoDB Via ssh

You can accomplish this with SSH Tunneling, setting up your remote MongoDB instance to run on one of your local ports. By default, MongoDB runs on 27017, so in the example below, I've chosen to map my remote MongoDB instance to my local 27018 port.

If on your trying to copy a database from SERVER1 to LOCALHOST, you could run this command on your LOCALHOST:

ssh -L27018:localhost:27017 SERVER1

(Obviously replace SERVER1 with your actual server or ssh alias)

This opens an SSH connection to SERVER1, but also maps the port 27018 on LOCALHOST to the remote port 27017 on SERVER1. Don't close that SSH connection, and now try to connect to MongoDB on your localhost machine with port 27018, like so:

mongo --port 27018

You'll notice this is now the data on SERVER1, except you're accessing it from your local machine.

Just running MongoDB normally:

mongo (or mongo --port 27107)

Will be your local machine.

Now, since you technically have (on your LOCALHOST, where you ran the SSH tunnel):

• MongoDB (LOCALHOST) on 27017
• MongoDB (SERVER1) on 27018

You can just use the db.copyDatabase() function inside MongoDB (LOCALHOST) to copy over data.

FROM LOCALHOST ON PORT 27017 (Executing on live will DROP YOUR DATA)

// Use the right DBuse DATABASENAME; // Drop the Existing Data on LOCALHOSTdb.dropDatabase();// Copies the entire database from 27018db.copyDatabase("DATABASENAME", "DATABASENAME", "localhost:27018");

You should be able to wrap this all up into a shell script that can execute all of these commands for you. I have one myself, but it actually has a few extra steps that would probably make it a bit more confusing :)

Doing this, and using MongoDB's native db.copyDatabase() function will prevent you from having to dump/zip/restore. Of course, if you still want to go that route, it wouldn't be too hard to run mongodump, export the data, tar/gzip it, then use scp TARGETSERVER:/path/to/file /local/path/to/file to pull it down and run a mongorestore on it.

Just seems like more work!

Edit - Here's a SH and JS file that go together to make a shell script you can run this with. Run these on your LOCALHOST, don't run them on live or it'll do the db.dropDatabase on live. Put these two files in the same folder, and replace YOURSERVERNAME in pull-db.sh with the domain/ip/ssh alias, and then in pull-db.js change DBNAMEHERE to whatever your database name is.

I normally create a folder called scripts in my projects, and using Textmate, I just have to hit ⌘+R while having pull-db.sh open to edit in order to execute it.

pull-db.sh

ssh -L27018:localhost:27017 YOURSERVERNAME '    echo "Connected on Remote End, sleeping for 10";     sleep 10;     exit' &echo "Waiting 5 sec on local";sleep 5;echo "Connecting to Mongo and piping in script";cat pull-db.js | mongo

pull-db.js

use DBNAMEHERE;db.dropDatabase();use DBNAMEHERE;db.copyDatabase("DBNAMEHERE","DBNAMEHERE","localhost:27018");

I added some extra code to the shell script to echo out what it's doing (sorta). The sleep timers in the script are just to give the SSH connections time to get connected before the next line is run. Basically, here's what happens:

1. First line of the code creates the tunnel on your machine, and sends the ECHO, SLEEP, then EXIT to the remote SSH session.
2. It then waits 5 seconds, which allows the SSH session in step 1 to connect.
3. Then we pipe the pull-db.js file into the local mongo shell. (Step #1 should be done within 5 sec...)
4. The pull-db.js should be running in mongo now, and the SSH terminal in Step #1 has probably run for 10 seconds after it's connection opened, and the EXIT is sent to it's session. The command is issued, HOWEVER, the SSH session will actually stay open until the activity from Step #3 is complete.
5. As soon as your pull-db.js script finishes pulling all of your data from the remote server, the EXIT command issued in Step #1 on the remote server is finally allowed to close the connection, unbinding 27108 on your localhost.

You should now have all of the data from your remote database in your localhost.

To complete Jesta great answer, if you want to do the reverse (copy from local database to distant database), you have to bind the port the other way, with the -R command instead of the -L command :

ssh -R27018:localhost:27017 YOURSERVERNAME

and now, being logged to the REMOTE server, you can copy the db from the local database :

mongo

> db.copyDatabase('test','test','localhost:27018')

I don't really like to have one database connect to another - IMHO it breaks the separation of environments and makes it complicated to automate such scripts.

My solution is to use the mongo dump/restore which use "dump directories" and to use tar for streaming the files. A trivial implementation (for copying from one remote to another remote) might look like this:

ssh remote1 'mongodump > /dev/null && tar -zc dump && rm -rf dump' | \  ssh remote2 'tar -zx && mongorestore dump && rm -rf dump'

Notes:

1. that both mongodump and mongorestore has very verbose output, but mongodump's will both mess with the tar streaming and also apparently mongodump will actually refuse to work if you run without a pseudo-terminal and without output redirection.
2. mongodump has an option to dump to stdout, but I couldn't figure out what kind of format it uses and I didn't understand how to get mongorestore to load that.