Changed in version 3.6.

Important

Passwords should be random, long, and complex to ensure system security and to prevent or delay malicious access.

Create the user administrator.

Connect to the primary to create a user with userAdminAnyDatabase role. The userAdminAnyDatabase role grants access to user creation on any database in the deployment.

The following example creates the user fred with the userAdminAnyDatabase role on the admin database.

admin = db.getSiblingDB("admin")
admin.createUser(
  {
    user: "fred",
    pwd: "changeme1",
    roles: [ { role: "userAdminAnyDatabase", db: "admin" } ]
  }
)

At the completion of this procedure, any client that administers users in the replica set must authenticate as this user, or a user with similar permissions.

See Database User Roles for a full list of built-in roles and related to database administration operations.

Create the cluster administrator.

Connect to the primary to create a user with clusterAdmin role. The clusterAdmin role grants access to replication operations, such as configuring the replica set.

The following example creates the user ravi with the clusterAdmin role on the admin database.

db.getSiblingDB("admin").createUser(
  {
    "user" : "ravi",
    "pwd" : "changeme2",
    roles: [ { "role" : "clusterAdmin", "db" : "admin" } ]
  }
)

At the completion of this procedure, any client that administrates or maintains the replica set must authenticate as this user, or a user with similar permissions.

See Cluster Administration Roles for a full list of built-in roles related to replica set operations.

Create users for client applications.

Create users to allow client application to connect and interact with the replica set. At the completion of this tutorial, clients must authenticate as a configured user to connect to the replica set.

See Database User Roles for basic built-in roles to use in creating read-only and read-write users.

The following creates a user with read and write permissions on the foo database.

Create a user with the readWrite role in the foo database.

db.getSiblingDB("foo").createUser(
  {
    "user" : "joe",
    "pwd" : "changeme2",
    roles: [ { "role" : "readWrite", "db" : "foo" } ]
  }
)

Clients authenticating as this user can perform read and write operations against the foo database. See Authenticate a User for more on creating an authenticated connection to the replica set.

See the Add Users tutorial for more information on adding users. Consider security best practices when adding new users.

Update Client Applications

At this point in the procedure, the replica set does not enforce authentication. However, client applications can still specify auth credentials and connect to the replica set.

Update client applications to authenticate to the replica set using a configured user. Authenticated connections require a username, password, and the authentication database. See Authenticate a User.

For example, the following connects to a replica set named mongoRepl and authenticates as the user joe.

mongo  -u joe -password changeme2 -authenticationDatabase foo --host mongoRepl/mongo1.example.net:27017, mongo2.example.net:27017, mongo3.example.net:27017

If your application uses a MongoDB driver, see the associated driver documentation for instructions on creating an authenticated connection.

At the completion of this tutorial, the replica set rejects non-authenticated client connections. Performing this step now ensures clients can connect to the replica set before and after the transition.

Create a keyfile.

With keyfile authentication, each mongod instances in the replica set uses the contents of the keyfile as the shared password for authenticating other members in the deployment. Only mongod instances with the correct keyfile can join the replica set.

The content of the keyfile must be between 6 and 1024 characters long and must be the same for all members of the replica set.

You can generate a keyfile using any method you choose. For example, the following operation uses openssl to generate a complex pseudo-random 1024 character string to use for a keyfile. It then uses chmod to change file permissions to provide read permissions for the file owner only:

openssl rand -base64 756 > <path-to-keyfile>
chmod 400 <path-to-keyfile>

See Keyfiles for additional details and requirements for using keyfiles.

Copy the keyfile to each replica set member.

Copy the keyfile to each server hosting the replica set members. Ensure that the user running the mongod instances is the owner of the file and can access the keyfile.

Avoid storing the keyfile on storage mediums that can be easily disconnected from the hardware hosting the mongod instances, such as a USB drive or a network attached storage device.

Restart each secondary or arbiter member of the replica set with transitionToAuth.