How to do it…

1. Create a directory /data and untar your downloaded file into this directory so that you now have a /data/mongodb-linux-x86_64-ubuntu1404-3.4.4 directory. All of MongoDB's core binaries are available in the /data/mongodb-linux-x86_64-ubuntu1404-3.4.4/bin directory.
2. Create a symbolic link to the versioned file directory for a simpler naming convention and also allowing us to use a generic directory name (for example, in scripts):

ln -s /data/mongodb-linux-x86_64-ubuntu1404-3.4.4/ /data/mongodb

1. Create a directory for the database:

mkdir /data/db

1. Start the MongoDB server:

/data/mongodb/bin/mongod --dbpath /data/db

1. You should see output like this:

2017-05-14T10:07:15.247+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=3298 port=27017 dbpath=/data/db 64-bit host=vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.247+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten] db version v3.4.4
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.248+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten] git version: 888390515874a9debd1b6c5d36559ca86b44babd
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.248+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten] OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.248+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten] allocator: tcmalloc
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.249+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten] modules: none
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.249+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten] build environment:
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.249+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten]     distmod: ubuntu1404
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.249+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten]     distarch: x86_64
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.250+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten]     target_arch: x86_64
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.250+0000 I CONTROL  [initandlisten] options: { storage: { dbPath: "/data/db" } }
 < -- snip -- >
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.313+0000 I COMMAND  [initandlisten] setting featureCompatibilityVersion to 3.4
 2017-05-14T10:07:15.313+0000 I NETWORK  [thread1] waiting for connections on port 27017

1. You can stop the server by pressing Ctrl + C.

2. Additionally, for convenience, we can edit the system's PATH variable to include the mongodb binaries directory. This allows us to invoke the mongodb binaries without having to type the entire path. For example, to execute the mongo client, instead of having to type /data/mongodb/bin/mongo every time, we can simply type mongo. This can be done by appending your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc files for bash and zsh respectively, with the following lines:

PATH=/data/mongodb/bin:${PATH}
export PATH