MongoDB Atlas simplifies MongoDB operation, but decisions must still be made to ensure best performance and availability. The blog series provides recommendations on four main areas: preparing for deployment, schema design and access patterns, scaling, and operational management. MongoDB Atlas is a hosted database as a service that offers security features, built-in replication, backups, fine-grained monitoring, automated patching, and choice of cloud providers. Schema design is crucial, with developers and data architects working together to develop the right data model. The document model allows for flexible schema design without expensive schema migrations. Indexes are used to optimize queries, while transactions ensure atomicity of updates. Visualizing the schema can be done using MongoDB Compass, which also enables ad hoc queries. Application access patterns significantly impact database performance, with searching on indexed attributes and covered queries being efficient. Document size should be managed to avoid unbounded growth, while data lifecycle management features such as TTL and capped collections facilitate managing data lifecycles. Dropping a collection is an efficient way to delete large volumes of documents.