You can limit mongod process usage using cgroups on Linux.
Using cgroups, our task can be accomplished in a few easy steps.
Create control group:
cgcreate -g memory:DBLimitedGroup
(make sure that cgroups binaries installed on your system, consult your favorite Linux distribution manual for how to do that)
Specify how much memory will be available for this group:
echo 16G > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/DBLimitedGroup/memory.limit_in_bytes
This command limits memory to 16G (good thing this limits the memory for both malloc allocations and OS cache)
Now, it will be a good idea to drop pages already stayed in cache:
sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
And finally assign a server to created control group:
cgclassify -g memory:DBLimitedGroup \`pidof mongod\`
This will assign a running mongod process to a group limited by only 16GB memory.
source: Using Cgroups to Limit MySQL and MongoDB memory usage