Default risks of losing data on a single MongoDB server

Question

My particular scenario: I want to spin up a new Linode VM solo for running MongoDB. I'll have backup services and etc. for everything related to the disk, so this question about 'risk' pertains only to the following.

I've been reading the MongoDB documentation and I've gotten to the fsync portion. It mentions that data in memory is written to disk every 60 seconds by default basically as I understand it.

So if I understand that right, out the box, the inherent risk of data loss with MongoDB is at most 59 seconds in the event something like power loss or otherwise a MongoDB instance is unsafely shut down?

Answer 1

EDIT: June, 2013

MongoDB has enabled journaling by default for some time now. The risk of losing data on a single server is more or less the risk of losing that server. If the server loses power, for example, you can restart the database cleanly.

See the docs on journaling for more info: http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/journaling/