What is the exact difference between mongod and mongos

Question

While I was looking into the MongoDB documentation, I found two different terms mongod and mongos.

While starting the server, I am using ./mongod --dbpath <path to mongodb> and I am running ./mongo to connect to the server.

Can someone please clarify the differences between these two terms.

Answer 1

The difference between mongod and mongoose is as follows: 

mongod is the daemon, mongo is the client, mongos is the 'MongoDB Shard Utility'. Take a look at man mongos.

Answer 2

Mongos is the MongoDB Shard Utility which is considered to be the controller and query router for sharded clusters. Sharding helps in partitioning the data-set into discrete parts.

Mongod is the primary daemon method for the MongoDB system. It helps in handling the data requests, managing the data access, and performing background management operations.