 <p>The slaveOk property is now known as ReadPreference (.SECONDARY in this case) in newer Mongo Java driver versions. This can be set at the Mongo/DB/Collection level. Note that when you set ReadPreference at these levels, it applies for all callers (i.e. these objects are shared across threads).</p> <p>Another approach is to try the ReadPreference.SECONDARY and if it fails, try without it and go to the master. This logic can be isolated to your repository layer, so the service layer doesn't have to deal with it. If you are doing this, you may want to set the ReadPreference at the DBQuery object, which is on a per-use basis.</p>