9.0 Overview
MongoDB 9.0 is the next major long-term-support release, available across MongoDB Atlas, Enterprise Advanced, and Community Edition. This skill explains what is new, how the two release trains work, and how to plan a safe upgrade for Atlas and self-managed deployments.
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Upon completion of the MongoDB 9.0 skill and assessment, you'll earn a Credly badge that you can share with your network. |
Learning Objectives
Choose an Upgrade Path
Explain the differences between versioned MongoDB 9.0 and Atlas Auto Upgrade to select the approach that fits your deployment and operational needs.
Prepare and Execute Upgrades
Apply compatibility checks, dependency reviews, staged testing, and deployment-specific procedures to plan and execute a safe MongoDB 9.0 upgrade.
Validate Production Readiness
Validate workloads, replication, monitoring, backups, authentication, Search, Vector Search, and time-series features after an upgrade, with rollback considerations in place.
Who is this Course Good for?
This skill badge is designed for database administrators, platform and infrastructure engineers, application teams, and technical decision-makers responsible for keeping MongoDB deployments secure, supported, and operationally ready. It is especially useful for people who need to evaluate an upgrade path, coordinate stakeholders, or guide a major-version upgrade into production.
Atlas learners will use the skill to distinguish planned versioned upgrades from Atlas Auto Upgrade and to understand how eligibility, maintenance windows, staged rollout, and feature activation affect their planning. Enterprise Advanced and Community learners will focus on the versioned release path, ecosystem compatibility, management-plane dependencies, Search Extensions, and topology-specific validation.
The course is also a fit for teams modernizing applications or improving operational readiness. It emphasizes planning decisions, customer outcomes, and validation checkpoints rather than command syntax, so learners can apply the concepts across different deployment environments.
What to Expect in this Course
The skill begins with the practical problem behind many delayed upgrades: the current database version still works, so the cost and disruption of changing it can feel greater than the benefit. You'll learn what MongoDB 9.0 offers, where it is available, and how its two release models change the way teams plan adoption.
Next, you'll examine the capabilities that make MongoDB 9.0 worth prioritizing. Intelligent Workload Management uses prioritization, queuing, and backpressure to keep clusters responsive under load. Native query expressions simplify data transformations, while Queryable Encryption, the WebAssembly-based server-side JavaScript engine, and expanded X.509 controls strengthen security. Query Stats, native OpenTelemetry metrics, and Change Streams improvements make workloads easier to understand, and first-class Hibernate support helps Java teams modernize existing applications.
The Atlas portion focuses on choosing between versioned MongoDB 9.0 and Atlas Auto Upgrade before planning the change. You'll consider cluster eligibility, driver compatibility, deployment-specific constraints, maintenance windows, non-production testing, and staged rollout behavior across the binary, feature-flag, and Feature Compatibility Version phases. You'll also learn why post-upgrade validation must include workload behavior, observability signals, security-related functionality, and any capabilities your deployment depends on.
The final portion addresses Enterprise Advanced and Community deployments. You'll work through release notes, compatibility changes, support matrices, topology, management-plane dependencies, drivers, tools, Search, Vector Search, time-series workloads, backups, and monitoring. You'll compare the automation available to Enterprise Advanced teams with the manual responsibilities of Community teams, then connect binary upgrade, FCV changes, rollback planning, and post-upgrade validation into a controlled operational process.
Summary of the Course
- Explain the difference between the versioned MongoDB 9.0 LTS release and Atlas Auto Upgrade.
- Connect deployment type and operational priorities to an appropriate upgrade approach.
- Describe MongoDB 9.0 improvements in workload management, query execution, security, observability, and developer productivity.
- Identify Atlas readiness checks for cluster eligibility, driver compatibility, maintenance windows, and deployment constraints.
- Apply a staged approach that separates binary rollout, feature activation, and FCV changes.
- Identify self-managed prerequisites across platforms, drivers, tools, management planes, and workload dependencies.
- Distinguish Enterprise Advanced and Community Search Extension workflows during an upgrade.
- Plan non-production testing, production monitoring, rollback expectations, and post-upgrade validation.
Aaron Becker | Curriculum Engineer
Aaron Becker is a Technical Trainer, Instructional Designer, and Training Manager who has worked in the tech sector for over 13 years. Before joining the Curriculum team at MongoDB, Aaron worked in DevOps at CircleCI, creating their first Certification course (CircleCI Associate Developer) and leading a team responsible for creating and managing the educational content for CircleCI Academy for external/customer training, as well as CircleCI University for internal team member training.
Prior to that, Aaron worked in data protection, redundancy, and security at Carbonite, where he headed up the Training team, created and delivered ILT training courses for Carbonite's Mid-Market and Enterprise level products, and assisted over 150 employees in earning Microsoft certifications.
Aaron enjoys writing, performing, recording, mixing and mastering music, playing video games, and writing biographical text in the third person.
Daniel Curran | Senior Manager, Curriculum Designer
Daniel Curran is a Senior Manager, Curriculum Designer at MongoDB, where he designs hands-on learning experiences that help developers build practical MongoDB skills through labs, skill badges, and technical courses. His recent work includes curriculum on memory for AI applications, building apps with code agents, and data resilience, with a focus on making complex topics clear, useful, and immediately applicable for learners.
Parker Faucher | Senior Curriculum Engineer
Parker Faucher is a Senior Curriculum Engineer on the MongoDB University team, where he designs and develops technical learning content for developers and data professionals. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, Parker specializes in building skills-based learning experiences across topics like vector search, AI applications, and MongoDB performance, helping learners go from concept to hands-on practice.
With a strong focus on quality and efficiency, Parker also leads efforts to integrate AI tooling into the curriculum development workflow, streamlining reviews, accelerating iteration cycles, and freeing up more time for the work that matters most.
Sarah Evans | Senior Curriculum Engineer
Sarah Evans is a Senior Curriculum Engineer at MongoDB, where she designs and develops technical learning experiences for MongoDB University. With a background that bridges curriculum design and hands-on technical expertise, she specializes in translating complex database and data modeling concepts into clear, accessible content for developers and technology professionals. Sarah is passionate about practical, engaging technical education and brings a deep interest in AI-driven development to her work helping learners navigate the intersection of modern databases and intelligent application design.
Have you ever postponed upgrading your database because the current version still works? You’re not alone. The perceived risk and disruption can feel bigger than the benefit, so you stay put.
But staying on older versions compounds risk over time. You miss out on security patches, bug fixes, and new capabilities that could make your workloads faster, more reliable, and cheaper to run.
MongoDB 9.0 changes that equation with improvements across performance, stability, security, observability, and developer productivity that make upgrading worthwhile.
Hi, I'm Aaron Becker, and I'm a Curriculum Engineer at MongoDB. In this skill, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know to upgrade to MongoDB 9.0 with confidence, whether you're running on Atlas, Enterprise Advanced, or Community Edition.
In our first lesson, we'll explore what MongoDB 9.0 is, where it's available, and why it matters.
You'll learn the difference between versioned LTS, which is available across deployments, and Atlas Auto Upgrade, which gives Atlas users a more continuous path to improvements.
We'll also look at the advances in performance, security, observability, and developer productivity that make upgrading worthwhile.
Next, we'll focus on planning and executing a safe upgrade on MongoDB Atlas.
We'll clarify the difference between versioned 9.0 and Atlas Auto Upgrade so you can choose the right path for your deployment, then walk through the key steps to prepare, validate, and confirm a successful upgrade.
Finally, we'll cover how to upgrade Enterprise Advanced and Community Edition deployments to MongoDB 9.0. We'll walk through the planning, execution, and validation steps for self-managed environments, including the deployment-specific considerations that shape a safe and successful upgrade.
By the end of this skill, you will know what’s new in MongoDB 9.0, choose the upgrade path that fits your team, and feel confident planning a safe upgrade for your deployment.
Once you've completed this content, you'll be ready to apply your new knowledge and earn your MongoDB 9.0 skill badge. It's more than a digital badge to share on LinkedIn—it's verifiable proof that you understand MongoDB 9.0's new features and how to plan a safe upgrade.
