I have streaming data on a Windows platform that I capture into Mongodb at fairly high rate of about 800 data points per second. I wish to have access to this data from outside the company, but the company does not wish to port forward 27017 (mongod) to the outside world. I have setup authorization and compiled mongod for ssl.
How can I expose Mongo to an external server? My server is sitting in another location in the "free" internet, and I wish it, every 10 seconds, to get the latest say, 1000 data points out of the server. How would I do this if I cannot port forward?
Can I get the mongo server to "push" data somehow to the external server (which has a fixed IP)? FTP is not a solution as the data streams too rapidly for this (I think).
Can I somehow stream it out using http, or some other protocol?
Ideally I would have liked "native" access to the mongo server as this would have allowed me to use tailable cursors, so any solution which would approximate this functionality would be good. However if this is not possible or practical, a streaming push solution from the firewall protected server, to the outside world server, would also work for me.
Best Answer
If your private server is always-on, and your company is ok with you using a VPN (that's a big if, check with IT), I would use openVPN and possibly MongoDB replica set.
OpenVPN's security/effort ratio is quite good - it's available as a standard package on most Linux distros, runs on configuration files, has many tutorials, uses static key (simple setup) or TLS (one key per client/server).
OpenVPN HOWTO
Your "external" server will be the VPN server, and the MongoDB "master" will connect to it automatically on startup.
After your servers are connected, you need to choose if you want to query the "master" via VPN, or use a secondary MongoDB server on the "external" to sync, then query it.
MongoDB's replica set allows one server to keep "in sync" with a primary server. It's usually used for fault tolerance, but you can also use it for your purpose.
MongoDB Geographically Redundant Replica Set.
Make sure you the "external" server will be non-voting and with priority 0 (means it won't be part of cluster calculations)
It's best if you confide with your IT guys about the whole solution, and test it before starting to rely on it for production-related tasks