MongoDB Receipes: Change chunk size in a shared cluster

The default chunk size in a shared cluster is 64MB. If we want to change it to a smaller/larger size (the allowed range of the chunk size is between 1 and 1024 MB):

Method 1:

This method works before/after the shared cluster is initialized and is recommended method

• Login to any mongos of the shared cluster:
  
• To change the global chunk size, update the value field of chunksize in the config database, here we are changing the chunk size to 5MB:
  

Method 2:

This method works only when you initialize the cluster for the first time. After the cluster is initialized, this method will not change the chunk size of the cluster.
Start the mongos with sharding.chunkSize (using config file) or --chunkSize (command line option) and set this option to desired chunk size value.