This document provides guidance on deploying and upgrading a MongoDB sharded cluster. It discusses the components of a sharded cluster including config servers, shards, and mongos processes. It recommends a production deployment has at least 3 config servers, 3 nodes per shard replica set, and multiple mongos instances. The document outlines steps for deploying each component, including initializing replica sets and adding shards. It also provides a checklist for upgrading between minor and major versions, such as changes to configuration options, deprecated operations, and connectivity changes.