Meteor -MongoDB - Single Database or Multiple Databases for SaaS Offering

Question

This is from another question bust i think it should be answered by the meteor team because i can't find a straight answer so far.

"..We have decided to use MongoDB for a SaaS offering we are creating. Each company that signs up gets their own url (mycompany.domain.com) and their own private set of users, projects, etc... Since we are using a NoSQL solution, and wouldn't have to manage pushing out schema updates to every database like we would with MySQL, I am wondering if it would be better to have one huge database containing all the data, or to have one database per client..."

So, can i have with meteor aproach (with one meteor project/server): 1) Different Url for each company 2) Different database (in the same monodb server) for each company and for that specific company users.

Answer 1

If you look at meteor's own hosting they use a mongodb server from MongoHQ. You could use multiple meteor servers with the single mongodb server and multiple databases.

I would think it depends more on your apps design, Meteor can use either design.

1) You could use the publish functions to provide each client with only his/her own records from one huge DB, use a way to get the subdomain http host into the publish function so it only gives out data for that set.

2) Use seperate meteor instances connecting to their own mongodb database on one server, and use some kind of proxy to server them to the subdomains. You could push each one with whatever data you would like, even perhaps separate app sets.

It would really depend on what you're building. If you want to only have to update one set of data so it updates for everyone you could go with 1), so if your use case requires this it might be a better option to go with.

The benefit of using seperate meteor instances is primarily customization. Its really hard to get the gist of what you want with the details you've given, so ill cut it short: If you want the ability of each client to be very different use 2), otherwise use 1)

If you look at Meteor.com's hosting I think each deployment is given its own database, the main reason: customization, everyones deployment is likely to be completely different.

UPDATE:

As of March 2014, there is a third party atmosphere package meteor-dbproxy that allows you to use multiple mongodb servers (as well as separate oplog integration endpoints) in your backend, thus allowing you db-level sandboxed multi-tenancy.

Answer 2

From a MongoDB point of view, you can do a database per client. The current stable MongoDB version, 2.2, has database level locking opposed to the large global lock of previous versions.

This way, if one of your clients is hammering the system, they don't affect your other clients with a global lock.