SURVEY Share your thoughts on the state of open-source in our latest Currents survey.

Products Pricing Docs  Sign in 

Tutorials Questions Get Involved  Search DigitalOcean / Sign Up

CONTENTS

Prerequisites

Step 1 — Adjusting the TUTORIAL RELATED

Firewall

Step 2 — Configuring
How To Configure Remote Access for MongoDB on
a Public bindIP Ubuntu 18.04
MongoDB Ubuntu Security Firewall NoSQL Ubuntu 18.04 Databases
Managed
Step 3 — Testing MySQL, Redis,
Remote Connectivity Postgres on
By Mark Drake
DigitalOcean
Conclusion
Posted October 8, 2020 · 2 versions  2.4k
Product

An earlier version of this tutorial was written by Melissa Anderson.

How To Secure Node.js

Introduction Applications with a
Content Security Policy
MongoDB, also known as Mongo, is an open-source document database used commonly in
Tutorial
modern web applications. By default, it only allows connections that originate on the same server
where it’s installed. If you want to manage MongoDB remotely or connect it to a separate
How To Set Up Multi-
application server, there are a few changes you’d need to make to the default configuration. Factor Authentication
S C R O L L Tfor
O TOP
SSH on Ubuntu 20.04
In this tutorial, you will configure a MongoDB installation to securely allow access from a trusted Tutorial
remote computer. To do this, you’ll update your firewall rules to provide the remote machine
access to the port on which MongoDB is listening for connections and then update its
configuration file to change its IP binding setting. Then, as a final step, you’ll test that your remote
machine is able to make the connection to your database successfully.

Prerequisites
To complete this tutorial, you’ll need:

A server running Ubuntu 18.04. This server should have a non-root administrative user and a
firewall configured with UFW. Set this up by following our initial server setup guide for
Ubuntu 18.04.

MongoDB installed on your server. This tutorial assumes that you have MongoDB 4.4 or
newer installed. You can install this version by following our tutorial on How To Install
MongoDB on Ubuntu 18.04.

A second computer from which you’ll access your MongoDB instance. For simplicity, this
tutorial assumes that this machine is another Ubuntu 18.04 server, with a non-root
administrative user and a UFW firewall configured following our initial server setup guide for
Ubuntu 18.04. However, Steps 1 and 2, which describe the actual procedure for enabling
remote connectivity on the database server, will work regardless of what operating system
the remote machine is running.

Lastly, while it isn’t required to complete this tutorial, we strongly recommend that you secure
your MongoDB installation by creating an administrative user account for the database and
enabling authentication. To do this, follow our tutorial on How To Secure MongoDB on Ubuntu
18.04.

Step 1 — Adjusting the Firewall

Assuming you followed the prerequisite initial server setup tutorial and enabled a UFW firewall on
your server, your MongoDB installation will be inaccessible from the internet. If you intend to use
MongoDB only locally with applications running on the same server, this is the recommended and
secure setting. However, if you would like to be able to connect to your MongoDB server from a
remote location, you have to allow incoming connections to the port where the database is
listening by adding a new UFW rule.

Start by checking which port your MongoDB installation is listening on with the lsof command.
This command typically returns a list with every open file in a system, but when combined with the
-i option, it lists only network-related files or data streams.

The following command will redirect the output produced by lsof -i to a grep command that
searches for a string named mongo :

$ sudo lsof -i | grep mongo

This example output shows that the mongod process is listening for connections on its default
port, 27017 :

Output
. . .
mongod 82221 mongodb 11u IPv4 913411 0t0 TCP localhost: 27017 (LISTEN)
. . .

In most cases, MongoDB should only be accessed from certain trusted locations, such as another
server hosting an application. One way to configure this is to run the following command on your
MongoDB server, which opens up access on MongoDB’s default port while explicitly only
allowing the IP address of the other trusted server.

Run the following command, making sure to change trusted_server_ip to the IP address of the
trusted remote machine you’ll use to access your MongoDB instance:

Note: If the previous command’s output showed your installation of MongoDB is listening on a non
default port, use that port number in place of 27017 in this command.

$ sudo ufw allow from trusted_server_ip to any port 27017

In the future, if you ever want to access MongoDB from another machine, run this command again
with the new machine’s IP address in place of trusted_server_ip .

You can verify the change in firewall settings with ufw :

$ sudo ufw status

The output will show that traffic to port 27017 from the remote server is now allowed:

Output
Status: active

To Action From
-- ------ ----
OpenSSH ALLOW Anywhere
27017 ALLOW trusted_server_ip
OpenSSH (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)

You can find more advanced firewall settings for restricting access to services in UFW Essentials:
Common Firewall Rules and Commands.

Next, you’ll bind MongoDB to the server’s public IP address so you can access it from your remote
machine.

Step 2 — Configuring a Public bindIP

At this point, even though the port is open, MongoDB is currently bound to 127.0.0.1 , the local
loopback network interface. This means that MongoDB is only able to accept connections that
originate on the server where it’s installed.

To allow remote connections, you must edit the MongoDB configuration file — /etc/mongod.conf
— to additionally bind MongoDB to your server’s publicly-routable IP address. This way, your
MongoDB installation will be able to listen to connections made to your MongoDB server from
remote machines.

Open the MongoDB configuration file in your preferred text editor. The following example uses
nano :

$ sudo nano /etc/mongod.conf

Find the network interfaces section, then the bindIp value:

/etc/mongod.conf

. . .
# network interfaces
net:
port: 27017
bindIp: 127.0.0.1

. . .

Append a comma to this line followed by your MongoDB server’s public IP address:

/etc/mongod.conf

. . .
# network interfaces
net:
port: 27017
bindIp: 127.0.0.1 ,mongodb_server_ip

. . .

Save and close the file. If you used nano , do so by pressing CTRL + X , Y , then ENTER .

Then, restart MongoDB to put this change into effect:

$ sudo systemctl restart mongod

Following that, your MongoDB installation will be able to accept remote connections from
whatever machines you’ve allowed to access port 27017 . As a final step, you can test whether the
trusted remote server you allowed through the firewall in Step 1 can reach the MongoDB instance
running on your server.

Step 3 — Testing Remote Connectivity

Now that you configured your MongoDB installation to listen for connections that originate on its
publicly-routable IP address and granted your remote machine access through your server’s
firewall to Mongo’s default port, you can test that the remote machine is able to connect.

Note: As mentioned in the Prerequisites section, this tutorial assumes that your remote machine is
another server running Ubuntu 18.04. The procedure for enabling remote connections outlined in
Steps 1 and 2 should work regardless of what operating system your remote machine runs, but the
testing methods described in this Step do not work universally across operating systems.

One way to test that your trusted remote server is able to connect to the MongoDB instance is to
use the nc command. nc , short for netcat, is a utility used to establish network connections with
TCP or UDP. It’s useful for testing in cases like this because it allows you to specify both an IP
address and a port number.

First, log into your trusted server using SSH:

$ ssh sammy @ trusted_server_ip

Then run the following nc command, which includes the -z option. This limits nc to only scan for
a listening daemon on the target server without sending it any data. Recall from the prerequisite
installation tutorial that MongoDB is running as a service daemon, making this option useful for
testing connectivity. It also includes the v option which increases the command’s verbosity,
causing netcat to return some output which it otherwise wouldn’t.

Run the following nc command from your trusted remote server, making sure to replace
mongodb_server_ip with the IP address of the server on which you installed MongoDB:

$ nc -zv mongodb_server_ip 27017

If the trusted server can access the MongoDB daemon, its output will indicate that the connection
was successful:

Output
Connection to mongodb_server_ip 27017 port [tcp/*] succeeded!

Assuming you have a compatible version of the mongo shell installed on your remote server, you
can at this point connect directly to the MongoDB instance installed on the host server.

One way to connect is with a connection string URI, like this:

$ mongo "mongodb:// mongo_server_ip :27017"

Note: If you followed the recommended How To Secure MongoDB on Ubuntu 18.04 tutorial, you will
have closed off access to your database to unauthenticated users. In this case, you’d need to use a
URI that specifies a valid username, like this:

Copy
$ mongo "mongodb:// username @ mongo_server_ip :27017"

The shell will automatically prompt you to enter the user’s password.

With that, you’ve confirmed that your MongoDB server can accept connections from the trusted
server.

Conclusion
You can now access your MongoDB installation from a remote server. At this point, you can
manage your Mongo database remotely from the trusted server. Alternatively, you could configure
an application to run on the trusted server and use the database remotely.

If you haven’t configured an administrative user and enabled authentication, anyone who has
access to your remote server can also access your MongoDB installation. If you haven’t already
done so, we strongly recommend that you follow our guide on How To Secure MongoDB on
Ubuntu 18.04 to add an administrative user and lock things down further.

Was this helpful? Yes No    

0

Report an issue

About the authors

Mark Drake
Technical Writer @ DigitalOcean

Still looking for an answer?

 Ask a question  Search for more help

Comments

0 Comments

Leave a comment...

Sign In to Comment

This work is licensed under a Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

GET OUR BIWEEKLY NEWSLETTER HUB FOR GOOD BECOME A CONTRIBUTOR

Sign up for Infrastructure as a Working on improving health You get paid; we donate to tech
Newsletter. and education, reducing nonprofits.
inequality, and spurring
economic growth? We'd like to
help.

Featured on Community Kubernetes Course Learn Python 3 Machine Learning in Python Getting started with Go Intro to Kubernetes

DigitalOcean Products Virtual Machines Managed Databases Managed Kubernetes Block Storage Object Storage Marketplace VPC Load Balancers

Welcome to the developer cloud

DigitalOcean makes it simple to launch in the

cloud and scale up as you grow – whether you’re
running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Learn More

Company Products Community Contact

About Pricing Tutorials Get Support

Leadership Products Overview Q&A Trouble Signing In?
© 2020 DigitalOcean, LLC. All rights reserved.
Blog Droplets Tools and Integrations Sales
Careers Kubernetes Tags Report Abuse
Partners Managed Databases Product Ideas System Status
Referral Program Spaces Write for DigitalOcean
Press Marketplace Presentation Grants
Legal Load Balancers Hatch Startup Program
Security & Trust Center Block Storage Shop Swag
API Documentation Research Program
Documentation Open Source
Release Notes Code of Conduct