How to open a Mongo Atlas backup snapshot locally?

Question

I've enabled automatic backups on Mongo Atlas. Now I need to view and query a specific snapshot to check some documents? How can I do it quickly and safely?

Answer 1

Go to Mongo Atlas console, click on your cluster, then go to Backup tab and download your snapshot:

You'll get a .tgz archive. It opens in a popup, so mind your blocker.

Unpack the archive, then run

docker run -it -p 27017:27017 -v /tmp/extracted/snapshot/dir:/data/db  mongo

Now you can connect to the snapshot data using a mongo client like MongoDB Compas using default connection (localhost:27017).

Answer 2

The accepted answer did not work for me. Alternative approach:

Download the backup from your Atlas console and extract it.

Then run the following in your Terminal:

mongod --dbpath ~/Downloads/Cluster0-2020-11-20T15-53-03.006Z

Replacing Cluster0... with your extracted folder.

Now you can connect to the snapshot data using a mongo client like MongoDB Compass using default connection (localhost:27017).

You can also define a custom port with --port