MongoDB Recipes: How to change MongoDB’s sort buffer size

When MongoDB could not use an index obtain the sort order for a query, then it sorts the results in memory. If the sort operation consumes more than 32 megabytes, MongoDB returns an error:
"Executor error during find command: OperationFailed: Sort operation used more than the maximum 33554432 bytes of RAM. Add an index, or specify a smaller limit."


As written in MongoDB document, to avoid this error we can either create an index supporting the sort operation or we can use sort() in conjunction with limit()
Also memory usage limit for sorts can be configured via the internalQueryExecMaxBlockingSortBytes parameter. In the following example I am setting the sort buffer size to 128MB:
> db.adminCommand({"setParameter": 1, "internalQueryExecMaxBlockingSortBytes" : 134217728})

Now my MongoDB will use 128MB memory for the sorts that could not use an index .