pricing for MMS ?

I'm not sure I understand how much this would actually cost me.

It says first 8 servers free. what instance type?

price per storage ? (not replica)

This entire thing is not clear.

I would appreciate if someone could explain in more exact terms

Hi Gil. There's a very precise explanation of the pricing available in the MMS web UI. While looking at an MMS group, click on Administration on the left hand navigation tab, then Billing/Subscription in the submenu. This will open the billing page, where you can see detailed information about your current bill for the group. If you click on the link "Understanding Your Bill", a modal will pop up with detailed information about how billing works. To answer your specific questions from that information:

1. "it says first 8 servers free, what instance type":  A server is billable if it is running a mongod process and is a data bearing node. Servers that act solely as config servers, arbiters and mongos routers do not count. 

2. "price per storage": I'm not clear if you're referring to backup or not. There is no charge based on storage quantity except for backup, where the charge is based on the size of the dataset being backed up. This is basically the size reported from db.stats().dataSize for a database. The price is $2.50/GB/month, annualized to $30/GB/year.

Please follow up with any further questions.

You may already be aware of this, but I'd like to add one more point of clarification since some of the terms like "servers" tend to get a tad overloaded: MMS Automation uses a "bring your own infrastructure" approach. This means that any hosting/service costs for your server environments (for example, instances provisioned on AWS) are independent of MMS. MMS includes features to help provision instances via the EC2 API, but AWS service costs are still billed to you by AWS. If you already have a server environment or would like to use a provider other than AWS, you can also install an MMS automation agent to manage deployments in that environment.

Any pricing/costs for MMS are specific to being able to deploy and manage MongoDB instances beyond the free tier, or if you are using the MMS Backup service.

Does the monitoring also stop at 8 servers? I thought MMS (monitoring) was always free for any number of servers.

Also, I am assuming Gil was referring to the pricing page on the MMS site. It confused me a bit too. 

And to be honest, from my start-up point of view, $50 per month per server is a steep price. No start-up discounts? Isn't there any kind of bulk price reduction either? I mean, if I am MMSing 1000 servers, I'd expect a very decent discount. Why would I also pay the same amount a year in advance and not get any discount for putting that money up front? From a "cloud computing SaaS perspective", the pricing is, as such, not really making much sense.

Reading this answer from Asya. It looks like MMS has been changed around completely. I think Mongo might be making a mistake forcing the management side of MMS onto the customer. It might be they have other automation in place or have themselves set up the cluster and would only like to use the monitoring capabilities. 

Does the monitoring also stop at 8 servers? I thought MMS (monitoring) was always free for any number of servers.

Hi Scott,

Up until recently, MMS has included free monitoring with an optional paid backup service.

The newest version of MMS has been re-envisioned as a more complete management service including optional provisioning (via ec2) through to deployment, monitoring, and backup. You can read more about the changes: 

 - http://blog.mongodb.org/post/99991498968/mongodb-management-service-re-imagined-the-easiest-way

 - http://www.eliothorowitz.com/blog/2014/10/13/the-road-to-mms-automation/.

If you have a classic MMS group, it will continue to function as before with monitoring.

 

Also, I am assuming Gil was referring to the pricing page on the MMS site. It confused me a bit too. 

And to be honest, from my start-up point of view, $50 per month per server is a steep price. No start-up discounts? Isn't there any kind of bulk price reduction either? I mean, if I am MMSing 1000 servers, I'd expect a very decent discount. Why would I also pay the same amount a year in advance and not get any discount for putting that money up front? From a "cloud computing SaaS perspective", the pricing is, as such, not really making much sense.

If you were buying 1,000 units of any product from a vendor I would assume you would get in touch to discuss volume discounts and terms. With that many servers to manage you will absolutely need some sort of deployment automation/management to keep your team sane and your customers happy ;-).

The MMS free tier allows you to manage several replica sets or a small sharded cluster, and the paid cost is only for servers beyond that tier. For example, with a free tier of 8 servers a 10 server managed deployment would only cost $100/month (or average of $10/server in USD). In my opinion this doesn't seem unreasonable compared to the cost of someone's time to perform the same steps manually (or maintain automation recipes), and there is added value in the monitoring. The MMS pricing page could definitely be clearer, though.

There is a tangible cost to providing infrastructure for data monitoring & alerts, and with the inclusion of automation we believe you will have significant savings in the administration of your deployments. There are alternatives to MMS so your startup or company is certainly not forced to use this service.

We do appreciate the challenges of bootstrapping startups on a budget (every company begins as a startup!), and welcome any feedback or questions you may have. We have many initiatives to help startups and community, for example free online education via MongoDB University and our recently announced "MongoDB Accelerator for Startups" which provides discounted commercial support & training: http://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/mongodb-accelerator-startups.

Can a user use a classic MMS group, in order to get the monitoring only, if she is a new user (we haven't signed up yet)? Or can one get the monitoring for a less expensive charge, separate from the other services?

Looking at 10 servers, your argumentation works and that is a fair price. Looking at 100 servers, it gets a bit expensive. That might just be me and my tight budget perspective though. And you are right, if you have an expansive MongoDB server pool, without automation, it would be practically impossible to handle. 

With that in mind, we are also going to be doing automation, but through Scalr and using their automation system within our own system. Thus, my concern about forcing the management part on customers. We might like to use monitoring, but without the management or back-up services.

Can a user use a classic MMS group, in order to get the monitoring only, if she is a new user (we haven't signed up yet)?

Hi Scott,

Signup for "classic" MMS is closed; all new groups created will use the latest release.

Or can one get the monitoring for a less expensive charge, separate from the other services? 

Looking at 10 servers, your argumentation works and that is a fair price. Looking at 100 servers, it gets a bit expensive. That might just be me and my tight budget perspective though. And you are right, if you have an expansive MongoDB server pool, without automation, it would be practically impossible to handle. 

With that in mind, we are also going to be doing automation, but through Scalr and using their automation system within our own system. Thus, my concern about forcing the management part on customers. We might like to use monitoring, but without the management or back-up services.

In the current product iteration the automation, monitoring, and backup components have been integrated with the intent of a more seamless service (for example, coordinating deployment with monitoring). Use of the backup component is optional.

The new MMS changes have only been live for a few weeks so we're still gathering user feedback, but do appreciate that some users might prefer a la carte or other options.

Great Stephen. This is another reason I want to use MongoDB. Your-all's heart is in the right place, making customers happy.:-)